Reviving Lost Stars of the City of Light
By Rosemary Feitelberg
NEW YORK — Paris in the Roaring Twenties flashed a few high-wattage designers, but a new museum exhibition illuminates a few lesser-known stars.
“Fashioning the Modern Woman: The Art of the Couturière 1919-1939,” which bows Tuesday and runs through April 10 at the Museum at FIT, shows off the work of Augusta Bernard, Louise Boulanger, the Callot sisters, the Boué sisters, Jeanne Paquin and Maggy Rouff, among others. In addition to FIT’s private collection, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Museum of the City of New York and private collectors provided the show’s 100 pieces — one-third of which have never been displayed publicly before. Beyond the sleek daytime dresses and dazzling evening looks, the display hints at women’s advancement in society.
Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT and curator of the exhibition, said she took issue with a quote from photographer Cecil Beaton that read, “Sandwiched between two world wars, between Poiret’s harem and Dior’s New Look, two women dominated the field of haute couture,” referring to Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. There’s no denying Chanel is probably the most important fashion designer of the 20th century, and certainly the most famous woman in a field still dominated by men. Yet, she and Schiaparelli were neither the first nor the only great women designers, Steele said.
“There weren’t just two women, but a whole regiment of women — Madeleine Vionnet, Alix Gres, Jeanne Lanvin and lots of others — who saw their role was to dress a woman, not just decorate her,” said Steele, during a walk-through earlier this week. “The whole cultural ideal of women was changing.”
That was not by chance. In the Twenties and Thirties, the rise of the modern liberated woman led to the surge in female designers who were inspired by the Ballet Russe and Isadora Duncan’s barefoot dancing, among other things. All in all, women were cutting their hair, casting aside corsets, wearing short skirts, smoking cigarettes, getting jobs, filing for divorce and dressing very radically, regardless of their social class.
“Who else would have known how to dress a modern woman than another modern woman?” Steele reasoned. “Just as the liberation of women changed the way they dress, so also did female designers further liberate women.”
That’s not to say they didn’t play favorites. Vionnet was said to drive away stout visitors to her salon with “Get out. Get out. I’m not dressing you.” She favored South American women, especially Cuban and Argentine women whose sex appeal was more her speed. In Steele’s research, she noted how several Vionnet clients liked nothing better than to dance in her fluid clothes.
Vionnet’s appreciation of women extended beyond their physiques. She provided her couture workers with health benefits, maternity leave, good lighting and comfortable chairs, and worked for the advancement of women and girls through education.
Most of the small couture houses started with a couple of reliable clients who purchased 25 dresses each year. Competitiveness was inherent for several, including Paul Poiret’s sister, Nicole Groult. Her brother resented her career choice so much that when their cars once collided, Poiret is said to have told his companion, “The woman in that other car used to be my sister.”
With the exception of Gres, Chanel and Lanvin, the majority of the designers were out of business by 1940, Steele said. Chanel’s dalliances with powerful men motivated her to “transform men’s clothing into women’s clothing so they would have the kind of power men had,” she added.
As for what today’s designers may take away from “Fashioning the Modern Woman,” Steele said, “Designers could hardly help but be inspired,” even if they might take shortcuts to get similar effects and details.
But even that is not breaking new ground. Claire McCardell used to buy Vionnet pieces to dissect them to see how more-affordable versions could be made for her contemporaries, Steele said
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What I would do to see that after a long obsession with all things in and around La Belle Epoque. Ahhh 
