More Doris Langley Moore

I had seen this series of BBC documentaries on fashion history entitled What We Wore on VHS in the London College of Fashion Library, but regretfully never borrowed them because I don't  have a VCR.  Currently I don't have borrowing privileges at London College of Fashion because I finished my MA, and the library card has been cut off.  A quick search for the series online opened up the magical realm of the BBC Archive site, where all of the clips can be viewed.


This series was remarkable, not only for its insightful look at dress history in the contemporary context of 1957 Britain, but they were the first BBC programmes to be broadcast in colour! 


I do recommend spending an evening viewing them all - Enjoy the brilliance of the colours as well as Ms. Langley Moore's rather stern commentary and dry sense of humour.  Do also salute her for being a pioneering fashion curator and great innovator of linking fashion to a wider social and cultural context.

Some screen shots I took below illustrate the range and highlights of the programme's topics.


Enjoy!

Celebrity Museum Mannequins

This fledgling blog and its author have been fortunate to have the encouragement of a small group readers, and you seem to have most enjoyed the peek into the Harrod's archive, so this week, another look at forgotten fashion exhibition ephemera.  This time, a close look at the 1957 guide to the  Museum Costume at Eridge Castle With Commentary on the Trends of Fashion by Doris Langley Moore.  Ms. Langley Moore, who in 1963 founded the Museum of Costume at Bath, is also famous for debunking the myth of the 18 inch Victorian waist via primary research: measuring the waists of over 200 Victorian corsets and bodices, finding none less than 21.  So equip yourself with that knowledge when the need to defend corsetry arises, as it often does.


I recently purchased a copy of The Museum of Costume booklet, bound in a metallic bronze soft cover from an Amazon marketplace seller for the bargain price of £3.50.  To my delight, it arrived with a treasure between its first and second pages: a newspaper clipping of a review of the museum! This yellowing fragment of an unknown newspaper lauds the exhibition, its life-like display scenarios, and the connections it makes between historic and contemporary fashion.  So, like the Harrod's pamphlet, it has a keen eye towards the use of history to market contemporary fashionable dress.

Inside the booklet, Doris Langley Moore introduces us to the collection, and describes some of the challenges and methods of curating dress in museums.  She outlines the problems encountered by dress historians in attempting to accurately and engagingly display items of clothing, most of which are still faced by fashion curators today.  Although the publishing of this honest and informative portrait of the work of an early dress historian is surprising in itself, what is even more remarkable are the illustrations in this booklet.  A range of historic garments from the collection dating from 1760 to 1924 are pictured - on living celebrity models! 

Yes, photographs of historic and irreplaceable garments modeled by contemporary celebrities.  Needless to say, this choice of presentation is not an option for fashion curators in the 21st century.  Wearing museum artefacts is anathema to the very aims of textile preservation, but I am fairly certain that when faced with archives full of beautiful garments, even the most dedicated fashion academic must have considered slipping something on...just for a moment-just one shoe? or something from a handling collection? Even if you have resisted the temptation up to now, then take a look at these gorgeous, if slightly anachronistic portraits of British actors and aristocrats in the togs of yesteryear, and then just imagine yourself or your favourite thespian in a pelisse, petticoat or polonaise. 

While the opportunity to actually don fashion artefacts does not come around too often, portraits of present day people wearing historic dress have not been entirely eschewed by British photographers.  Take as example the recent work of Tom Hunter, whose portraits of Museum of London staff and patrons in varying degrees of anachronistic dress and settings are currently on display in the museum lobby.  So, despite the preciousness of artefacts, there is still room for some dressing up and posing in the dress of days gone by. All hail the glamour of anachronism.  

Please do check out the work of Tom Hunter at the Museum of London, and read more about him and see more of his work here.

Two Costume Confessions

Now before you go thinking this is turning into a personal drama blog, read on and be assured you are in for some rarely seen costume history material culture. And a big dose of the marketing of fashion history by Britain's most famous luxury department store.


That brings me to the confession. I've only been inside it once, and that was to use the loo on my first trip to London nearly fifteen years ago.  Now, living here for the past five years, I haven't ventured in, even for a pitstop. Liberty lures me often, but I have never been ensnared by Harrod's. 

That said, I have instead become terribly smitten with a pamphlet Harrod's produced in 1949 to celebrate its centennial. And just how did they publicize this event in retail history? Not with a sale or splashy ad campaign, but with a costume exhibition! As this practice is currently in vogue, with stores and brands like Jaeger and Marks and Spencer mounting academic exhibitions of their material archives, it is a perfect time to have a closer look at this early example of retailers linking contemporary fashion to its history.


How I have come to discover this exquisitely designed brochure, and to shed some scanner light on it, is my second confession.  I borrowed this item from the small but brilliant library at The Motley Theatre Design Course where I studied.  Then I put it in a file of things to look at later. Two years later.  So, thanks to this blog, it has come to the top of the list of things to share, and thus I can now return it to Motley with humble thanks and embarrassment.  To Motley, and to Percy Harris who built the library and has inspired generations of theatre design students I dedicate this post.


Without further ado, or further comment:
 Harrod's 100 Years of Fashion

Hope you enjoyed this forgotten treasure, a look at fashion parallels worth remembering.

And thus with a clear conscience, I may just treat myself to a visit to Knightsbridge.