Whatever Happened to...The Gap?

Readers of a certain age, do you remember the Gap?  I don't mean Gap, Inc., the once popular, now stuggling clothing chain, though there is a connection (keep reading).  I'm talking about The Generation Gap, and its impact on style.

Anyone who grew up in the mid-to-late Sixties or early Seventies, as I did, knows the term.  It defined the wide gulf in values and taste between the generation that grew up during The Great Depression and before, and the generation that was born during the relatively prosperous Postwar period, often termed The Baby Boom.

The concept of The Generation Gap was everywhere in American popular culture.  No self-respecting teenager or young adult in the late Sixties wanted to (or was supposed to want to) think or dress like their parents, and probably vice versa.  The older and younger generations really did seem to live on different planets, at least on the surface. 

1969 was a pivotal year.  Remember Woodstock?  Believe it or not, I was taken to see the film version of that rock concert as a kid.  Of course, my musical tastes tended more toward Jerry Herman...

Young people of both sexes were wearing caftans and jeans, love beads and granny glasses -- unless you worked in the Nixon administration.  Am I over-generalizing?

Even Ken got mod and joined a rock band, just like Desi Arnaz, Jr.

But "Fashion" would have none of this bohemian way of dressing -- or very little.  I'd argue that this is when home sewing lost its way.  When everybody was wearing Levi's, what was there to sew?

Recently I found this fantastic copy of Vogue Patterns (then called Vogue Pattern Book) from February/March 1969 at the flea market.  And leafing through it, you can see how radically different "official" fashion was from the way many, if not most, young people were choosing to dress back then.  While lovely, these clothes seem all wrong for the times.

Here's elegant model Maud Adams on the cover. Cheryl Tiegs is featured prominently inside.  These were like real fashion magazines and not just pattern catalogs.









These clothes make me think of chic Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair or Doris Day in her TV series.  Did anyone under 30 other than Julie Nixon (remember her?) ever wear them in real life?

Don't think this was only a female thing either.  Here I am in 1968 looking like a young David Eisenhower.



By 1971, I'd gone groovy, à la Keith Partridge in The Partridge Family.  I tuned in but I didn't turn on and I certainly didn't drop out.  I was only nine.



As far as Gap, Inc., they were formerly The Gap, which was a reference to The Generation Gap.  They removed the The because it ceased having meaning.  You probably knew that already.

Today, in fashion, there is no longer a Generation Gap.  Twenties, Fifties, Sixties, most everybody dresses the same -- like they're eighteen or so.  Even my eighty-one-year-old mother wears stretch leggings.   Forever 21 isn't just a store, it's a state of mind, and it speaks volumes about fashion today.

Lindsay and Mom

Christina Aguilera and Cher

In conclusion, friends, did you live through the Generation Gap years?  Do you remember how fashion changed -- or didn't it change as radically where you lived?

What do you think of the ladylike 1969 couture fashions from Vogue?  Were you -- or anyone you knew -- still wearing white gloves in 1969?

When do you think the generations started to dress the same again -- and why?

More great pics from my 1969 Vogue Pattern Book here.

Jump in!

Clothing vs. Costume

Friends, this is a costume.  In real life, nobody wears pottery-shard crowns on their head.

This, in contrast, is clothing -- bland, nondescript, contemporary men's clothing, no doubt from Uniqlo, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Clothing covers the body, preventing over-exposure and ideally enhancing our skin tone, nothing more.  Costume says, I am living in a world all my own; for tickets, please see the box office.   Get the difference?

Clothing.



Costume.



Now one thing I can say with certainty is that a lot of us sewers -- and non-sewers too -- live in fear that something we put on our bodies will be labelled costume, when we intended it to be merely clothing.  Am I right?

Only yesterday, I was reading the elegant musings of our friend Casey, who was discussing her extensive ladies glove collection (though I'm not sure she has ones like these).  To paraphrase Casey, she loves her gloves, but "cannot muster the courage" to wear them in public, unlike, say, hats.   Casey is the perfect example of someone sensitive to the difference between clothing and costume, and I'd love to hear more about how she makes the distinction.  (UPDATE: Don't miss Casey's comment below!)

Just to reiterate:  Clothing (Michael's shirt courtesy of Debbie Cook).



Costume.



Clothing.



Costume.



Wait, now I'm confused...

Once upon a time, when Western fashion was dictated by a handful of Parisian designers, the dividing line between clothing and costume was crystal clear.  Today, not so much.

Especially for lovers of vintage, or for the slightly eccentric, the difference between clothing and costume can get blurred.  Who's to say what is and isn't costume, after all?  And a lot of what distinguishes clothes from costume is the styling, or which gender is wearing it.

Readers, do you ever cross the line -- or live in fear of crossing it?  Are you dying to wear crinolines to the supermarket but fear being mistaken for June Cleaver or Alice Lon -- or Milton Berle?

In other news, while preparing for my Daily Ditch ritual, I found this lovely cotton shirting I picked up many months ago at Metro Textiles.  I'd totally forgotten I had it!  I really should make a shirt out of it someday soon, or boxers (don't forget our imminent sew-along) -- or both.



And now for today's Daily Ditch.  This groovy metal and glass mirror is something I picked up in the Nineties at the Chelsea Flea Market.  It's sort of cool, but I find convex mirrors to be big dust collectors, plus I'm at that point in my life when I don't need to see myself distorted every day.  Off it goes!



In closing, friends, how do you feel about clothing vs. costume?  Do colleagues mistake what you're wearing to work for something Lana Turner wore as Lady de Winter in The Three Musketeers? 

How do you distinguish between clothing and costume, and how do you determine when you've crossed the line -- or do you intentionally cross the line (and not just on Halloween)?  Are ostrich plumes and gauntlet gloves always wrong for daywear?

Especially if you love vintage, when does it just become too much?

Rules please!

Is Sewing an Art?

Readers, today's topic is challenging, but after re-reading yesterday's comments about the resurrection of dead couturier's fashion houses (specifically, whether Balenciaga was closer to a tractor manufacturer than to an artist like Picasso), I started wondering: is sewing an art? 

Just to be clear, I am not an art historian, though I did take a few art history classes many years ago, and I have been involved in various forms of artistic production throughout my life.

It's important to be clear about what one means by the term art, and throughout history the word (in all its various translations) has meant different things to different people at different times.

When I think of art, I think of a highly trained person expressing her- or himself through a particular medium.  So a writer of fiction could be considered an artist, but not a journalist.  But it gets confusing.  Poets are artists.  How about the people who write commercial jingles?  I think most of us like to think of art as something non-commercial, but this has likely never been the case.  Art has always been commissioned by others.  The artist has to live, after all. 

I took a look at the definition of artist on Wikipedia.  One of the modern definitions is "a person who engages in an activity deemed to be art."

So the question of today is: can home sewing -- or any sewing, for that matter -- be considered art, and who gets to decide?

I visited the Alexander McQueen show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and my hunch is that 95% of the visitors to this exhibit (or more) would consider his creations to be art.  Of course, it's rather a self-selecting group!  But given the popularity -- and increasing frequency -- of fashion-related museum exhibits and the rise of fashion departments in art museums, there seems no question that today, we (meaning the majority of people who think/care about such things) consider fashion to be an art form.

The same goes for commercial photography.  Original fashion photographs are highly collectible and valued today.  Who is the artist in the photograph below: couturier Balenciaga, French model Regine Debris, or photographer Irving Penn?  Or all three?

And if you go see the revival of Follies on Broadway, who are the artists involved there?  Stephen Sondheim, the composer, certainly.  Actress Bernadette Peters (below) too -- or not?  How about the orchestra players, the set designers, the costume designers?  I don't think we often think of costume designers as artists.  Should we?

This famous Cindy Sherman photograph, one of her Untitled Film Stills, belongs to the Museum of Modern Art. 

Would you consider this Cathy photo to be art?  (Oh, my, you flatter me!)  If it is art, who's the artist?  Cathy, Michael (who took the photo), or me (who set it up and sewed the dress)?

How about the sewing you do?  Looking around at sewing blogs as I am wont to do, there are a number of people whose projects look like art to me.

To be able to call it art, however, does it have to be original?  Can you stitch up a BurdaStyle Halter Dress and call it art?  (What if you draft your own, say, pants pattern?)  Doesn't the fact that you chose the fabric, that you had the image of how it should turn out in your head, somehow make it art?  Isn't sewing a form of self-expression?

Or are home sewers in particular more wisely considered technicians, or artisans?   It's easy to get mired in semantics.

So perhaps it's best to go directly to you, wise reader, and ask:

Do you consider yourself, as a sewer, to be an artist?

NOTE: We'll skip the Daily Ditch today.

Resurrecting Dead Couture Houses

Friends, when Pablo Picasso, the tremendously prolific painter who also made ceramics, sculptures, drawings, prints, and even rugs, died in 1973, that was the end; there would be no more Picassos.  There was no search for someone to take over the studio and paint Picasso-like paintings to sell to a public still hungry for more.

When legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers died in 1979, the estate didn't look for a new composer to create Sound of Music II: The Return of Rolf.  



Why then, are there so many fashion houses bearing the names of famous dead couturiers like Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Dior, and more recently Alexander McQueen?

Obviously many fashion houses do indeed close up shop when the founder dies.   But in this era of the global brand, it seems it's simply too profitable to stay in business, find another designer who will create in the style of the original, and pump out new fashions every season.

(If you've been following what's been happening over at Halston, it all starts to feel like a joke.  Let Halston die already!)

A lot of this relates to the public's understanding of how contemporary fashion, as opposed to, say, paintings, is created.  We know that most fashion designers are not couturiers, and that fashion companies employ huge staffs that do most of the actual design work.  Nobody imagines that Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger sketch, or pin, or baste.  Most people don't care who did the actual designing and we'll probably never find out.   It's mass fashion, albeit "designer" mass fashion.

Even back in the golden age of couture, while the couturier might have had the original vision, it was the staff who would actually execute the garments, and many houses employed staffs of hundreds, from cutters, embroiderers, and seamstresses, to models and vendeuses.  Even at its highest level, fashion was always very much a group effort.

I'm reading a fascinating book about Spanish-born couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga by Lesley Ellis Miller, and it's the best-written book -- if not the most sumptuously produced -- about couture I have ever read.







After Balenciaga's death in 1972, the business, which by this time included perfume and accessories, passed on to family members, who subsequently sold it.  It has since changed hands multiple times and is now owned by the Gucci Group, part of the French conglomerate PPR.  The creative director is the highly acclaimed young(ish) designer Nicholas Guesquière, and today Balenciaga thrives once more, albeit as a ready-to-wear house.  Guesquière has access to the Balenciaga archives, and refers to them from time to time for inspiration.





But other than the name and occasional references to some iconic silhouettes, what does this really have to do with couturier Balenciaga, except a way to cash in on his legacy? Isn't that what this really comes down to -- cash?  It's cheaper to resurrect an old brand than start up a new one, presumably, and much more profitable.  

Balenciaga represented the pinnacle of couture in the Postwar period and into the late Sixties, when he formally retired.  He set the standard for quality workmanship and innovative design.  Other couturiers revered him.  Among his protégés were Ungaro, Courrèges, and Givenchy, who went on to become hugely successful in their own right  -- and under their own names.

Now, I'm no more likely to have bought this stuff back then then I am now -- these were always clothes for the extremely well-to-do, just as they are today.  But the relentless marketing of these "luxury" brands today -- so well described in books like The End of Fashion by Teri Agins, and Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster by Dana Thomas -- can make a person cynical.

No matter how much money we do or do not have, there's something nice about knowing that someone out there is creating the best that money can buy, as opposed to the most profitable item, to be purchased by status-hungry trendsetters who don't know the difference.

At what point does the global branding of the old couture house-thing just become a big joke -- on us?



I'd be curious to know what you think about this.  Does it bother you that there's no longer a Balenciaga behind Balenciaga or do you not really care either way?  Is this, ultimately, an elitist argument against the democratization of luxury?

And now for today's Daily Ditch.

Friends, I've been hitting my closets and I'm starting small -- just some sweaters, tee shirts, running shorts: things I've owned for years and haven't worn in ages.   Time to say farewell.  

Not a Balenciaga label among them!



Have a great day, everybody!