June 5, 2013 • 22 mins
Paul Poiret was a French designer credited with unlacing women from corsets. Cristen and Caroline explore the intersection of fashion history, industrialization and gender equality in the first installment of their Boys of Summer series.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From House Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and this is the inaugural episode of
our Boys of Summer series. Yes, because we both love
Don Henley. That's right, that's all this episode is about. Yes,
(00:27):
it's gonna be a four episode long series on the
artistry of Don Henley. No, just kidding. We wanted to
do a series during June highlighting men who have made
significant contributions to the lives of women in various ways.
So throughout June we are going to highlight four Boys
(00:51):
of Summer and we're kicking off this week with Frons
designer Paul Poire. And while I don't know that Poire
is so so much a a gender equality champion or
anything like that, he did, however, unlaced women from the corsets.
(01:12):
He helped us breathe easier. Thank goodness. Yeah, this guy
had pretty humble beginnings in a working class Parisian family.
He was born in eighteen seventy nine to a cloth merchant,
so he sort of had an in already into the
design world. He became one of the twentieth century's greatest coturiers,
(01:33):
Is that right, Yeah, yeah, Okay, I'm pretending like I
know French. Okay, So he actually used his natural charisma
to gain entry into some of the most exclusive atliers
of the Belly Park. And basically an italier is it's
French for workshop, and it's where you would go if
(01:56):
you were an up and coming fashion designer, and you
would basically make designs alongside and with more important fashion
designers like Project Runway. Yeah, kind of like a fashion guild.
So he starts out he's working for other designers, he's
not necessarily working for himself, but immediately he starts shaking
things up. And in nineteen oh three, Poay created a
(02:20):
coat based on the shape of a kimono, and it
was indicative of the fashions he would eventually promote and
popularised throughout his career, things that were looser and that flowed.
He said that he'd become tired of the dominant aesthetic.
All that was soft, washed out and insipid was held
in honor. He thought, basically that all wealthy woman women
look the same, all corseted and wearing all those heavy,
(02:43):
ruffled things. Yeah, there is this anecdote about him going
to this fancy Parisian cafe and walking in and seeing
these very well dressed women sitting at a table. But
he thought to himself, I would have no idea how
to tell you to a part. There's there's no character
or individuality at all in the clothes that you're wearing.
(03:06):
And so we're gonna get to how He eventually was like,
you know what, ladies, let's take off that corset. But
for a little bit of bra history to understand just
how significant it is that we finally stopped wearing corsets.
Not surprisingly, the bra, the brazier, the boob holder, has
(03:31):
been around for a really, really, really long time. Historians
trace it back to b C. When Minoan women on
the island of Crete were tightly fitted bands across their
waists to hoist up that bad breasts. Yeah, so we
had push up bras starting in ancient times and then
course it's entered the picture around sixteen hundred. They were
(03:52):
made from stiffened linen and wood horn metal or whale teeth,
So right away, undergarments are incredibly comfortable, yes, because there's
nothing nothing that takes you through the day quite like
whale teeth holding your boob up. That's right, just crunching
down on your ribs. And now the early versions, though
of course it's were called stays. The word corset did
(04:14):
not come into general use until the late eighteenth century,
just little little grammar notes and etymological origins, because core
is the French word for body, and corsett it's like
a little body because you're being freaking shrunk by whale teeth.
It's it's a precious etymology for a not so precious garment,
(04:35):
but it's it wasn't just meant to create that tiny waste.
It was also meant to support the very heavy garments
of the time. Edwardian dress was super heavy, made of
these very thick fabrics. It was uncomfortable and an outfit
for a woman could weigh pounds easily. It's like carrying
(04:57):
around a toddler, Yeah, all the time on you. Well,
I guess, I mean, I don't know, tyler that holds
your boobs all over baby Bjorn, Yeah, exactly. So stuff
gets real. In eighteen sixteen, when French corsetier Leroy I
read the first is Leroy, I'm like, oh, the redneck
(05:18):
French corset Roy set out to France Tonic a course it,
so he invents the divorce courset, which separates and pushes
the breasts upward using padded iron or steel. And I
think it was around this point when something called the
divorce corset was manufactured that women and some men were like, okay, y'all,
(05:43):
things are getting a little crazy. And from while all
of this is going on, when we have now the
evolution from corset to the brazier. In the background, from
eighteen fifty to around nineteen fourteen, we have the dress
reform movement going on because there were people so radical,
folks who were thinking for not only women's but also
(06:04):
men's fashion as well. That okay, people, we were wearing
a lot of clothes. They're very heavy, they're so expensive.
What can we do? This is absolutely ridiculous. And there
were actually branches of them specifically focused on underwear reform,
which I love. I would love to go to those meetings. Yeah,
and underwear Reform has some coffee and pastry at an
underwear meeting. Well. Basically, underwear Reform advocated for everyone to
(06:27):
just wear union suits, which were like those onesies, you know,
those long john Yeah, there was who was it, Rebecca
Taylor no, Susan Taylor, Excuse me? Was her name? Was
this woman who advocated for the emancipation suit, which would
have been a replacement for all the women's corsets, bustles, crinoline,
et cetera. And you just wear a lady's union suit.
(06:49):
I liked it. I bet that gets warm, though my
mother would not enjoy that. No, that's a union suit.
Still sounds like too much to me, But wow, that
social movement is simmering in the back ground. In eighteen
eighty nine, we have Hermione Cadole, who opened up a
shop in Paris and she is attributed with selling the
first bra. It was a part of a two piece
(07:11):
underwear set. Scandalous. Yes, it was called as su Tien's Gorge.
And I know that I'm mangling that French, but I
wanted to say that because it's French for a throat support.
Oh okay, yeah, so bras literally a throat support, all right?
Well so in Marie too sec patented the first bra.
(07:34):
But meanwhile, throughout the eighteen nineties, artist Charles Dana Gibson
had popularized the s shaped silhouette of the Gibson girl
using a corset in a bustle, so like you're you've
got this tiny waist, but you're you're jutted out in
the front and then your butt sticking up in the back,
and it's very unnatural, and I'm sure there were a
lot of back pain going on. But it wasn't until
(07:54):
seven at the word brazier and enters the lexicon when
Vogue uses it for the first time, and all Parae
really was it's champion. He was the first to realize
the potential of fashion without corsets. And we'll go into
more detail and how Parae really popularized the no corset
look in high fashion, which then trickled down to lower fashion,
(08:17):
because at this point too, we start to have a
shift to where fashion becomes more democratized, where it's not
just really wealthy women who can look good, but the
styles change to where women of all means can look good.
This also will start to talk about the mass production
of goods. We have urbanization, all these things that are
(08:39):
starting to kick up. And on July nine, Mary Phelps
Jacob under the name Caress Crosby, patented a design for
the Broad not the first broad design, but it's the
design that would be the most widely used. It was
the closest thing at this point to a broad as
(09:00):
we would wear today. Yeah, silk handkerchiefs and a ribbon.
She developed it to wear under an evening gown after
her course. It kind of you know, it was was
readily seen under the dress. It was too scandalous. So
she made a little bra out of Hanky's little hanky bra.
She was a socialite, f y. I yeah, well so
(09:21):
talking about the whole fashion effects society and society effects
fashion and like world events make changes happen. That was
That was a delicate way of saying all that. Well,
so we have World War One and during this period
of course, it's really fall out of favor and they're
replaced by bras and girdles. But what helped that along.
Not only was it designers like Parae, but in nine
(09:43):
seventeen we have the U. S. War Industries Board, which
asked women to stop buying courses to save metal, and
boy did they They ended up saving twenty eight thousand
tons enough to build two battleships. Which is Craig, Craig
you if you ask me, so, how is Poiae influencing things? Well,
(10:05):
he is not only paying attention to the influence of
simplicity on cut and form. You have functionalism taking over
from art new vaux. Essentially, lines everywhere are becoming simpler.
The Gibson girl is falling out of fashion, and you
(10:26):
have the what will become afterwards, those straighter lines of
you think of the new woman of the flapper area
where women would actually bind their breasts down to look
as flat chested as possible. Um. And so Parade was
essentially riding a social wave and it was kind of
(10:48):
a confluence of a number of different forces, and he
happened to be the one with the vision for fashion
to say, oh, you know what, I'm going to put
together entire catalog based around this look. Well as part
of that catalog that I'll talk about in just a second. Um,
he really put the influence not only on simplicity of
(11:10):
cut and form, but brighter colors, boulder patterns, and lighter fabrics.
And around this time, uh, there was a focus on
function and form because, like Christen said, we had rapid
urbanization and increased popularity of sports like tennis, cycling, and
golf that created a need for clothes that allowed greater movement.
So Paray's view was simple. Elaborate underwear spoiled the line
(11:36):
of women's clothes. To him, it wasn't just so people
are playing tennis now, it's like, no, my designs, my simple, unstructured,
unfussy designs, are being ruined by the corset. And so
amid all of these social and fashion changes, his new
groundbreaking catalog, illustrated by JP, ended up revolutionizing fashion and
(12:00):
ash and illustration one of his dresses, the design for
a white dress in the Hellenic style was just a
tubular shape with a high waist that had no need
for hoops or a corset. Yeah. He also was a
big fan side note of turbans in place of large hats,
hair and pants under tunics for Downton Abbey fans. You
(12:20):
might remember where the youngest daughter debuts her new hair
and pant outfit and everyone was like, oh my goodness.
And yeah, there was definitely an outcry over those hair
and pants as quote a dangerous appropriation of the male prerogative. Um.
But I mean in thinking about the massive impact of
(12:42):
this catalog that Poiret put out, because we might think, well,
he's just one guy, how could he have that much influence? Well,
at the time, he was known as the king of fashion,
and I'm trying to think of modern day equivalent to that.
And I'm trying to think of a modern day equivalent
to that. I don't know. Maybe it's like if Mark Jacobs,
for instance, who has a major influence from high to
(13:04):
lower fashion, came out with something shocking that would make
international fashion news. All pants have inner tubes built in
pants are the new shirt? I love it well. So.
Emma West, in a paper called a Modernist Mode Fashion
(13:24):
nineteen and the Limits of Modernism, wrote that if fashionist
scene is a way of externalizing oneself, then wearing these
modern fashions would have been a big part of how
women expressed their modernity. She says. Moreover, Parais designs also
helped women embrace a modern lifestyle. With this emphasis, she
talks about on you know, his loose, comfortable clothes that
(13:47):
actually made sports and oh, I don't know, like walking possible.
She said, for the first time, women could fully negotiate
the speed and terrain of the modern city. Fashion change
the way that women interacted with an experience to modernity,
because now you're not wearing a corset and tight pound
(14:07):
toddler clothes you're less likely I would think to like
pass out in the streets. Well, and she also points
out how many different factors when you sum it all up,
combined to spark this idea for Parree, which includes technological innovation, urbanization. Sports.
You know, everyone was all of a sudden golfing and
(14:29):
playing tennis. You have the bicycle, Suffragism was happening, functionalism, cubism, exoticism,
as you see with pulling in more Eastern styles with
hair and vants and turbans. All of these factors combine
and it's kind of incredible. And so Poire is left
behind this legacy of free women from the corset because
(14:50):
he advocated for the brazier to replace it. But Poire
got the last laugh in terms of of confining women
to to clothes that restricted their movement. He introduced the
hobble skirt, which was a vertical, tight bottomed style and
he said, quote, I freed the bust and I shackled
(15:11):
the legs. Well, okay, so even if you can't take
long strides, at least you can take a deep breath.
Sure sure well, And which had a longer lasting impact
the hobble skirt or not having to wear a corset.
Oh yeah, because I still wear a hobble skirt. I
know the answer to that question. I'll tell you what
(15:31):
Carolina hobble skirt on public transit. That is, I've missed
so many trains. New Week hold on um I found.
I found a really fantastic article from nineteen seventy six
that was talking about an exhibition of Para's clothes in
New York UM and this quote from Robert Riley, who
(15:55):
was the director of the Design Lab of Fit Fashion
Institute of Technologg at the time, said that for a
thousand years women had worn structured clothing, and corsets were
from the knees to the armpits. And he threw that
out the window. He must have scared women to death.
When he visited the United States, there was a great
(16:16):
hue and cry. Parae was destroying women's morals. Women were
showing their ankles for the first time. But sad end
to the story is that even though Parae, you know,
revolutionized fashion in this major way that had a huge
historical significance, he died penniless. Like after the war, with
(16:38):
mass production entering into fashion, he didn't want to conform.
He wanted to continue working on couture clothes, and the
economics just weren't there. And I think the last time
the New York Times reported on Hi, while I was
still alive, he was working as a bartender, and and
then he died poor and kind of faded away, and
(17:01):
I just randomly ran across him, and I didn't know
the story about him. I'm sure fashion buffs out there
have heard of Portree, but we thought that he would
be a fun one to kick off the Boys of
Summer series because it's an interesting snippet of how one
person's major contribution, summed up in one fashion catalog really
(17:24):
change things. No, I'm sure there are some women saying, well,
we're still wearing bras, how about that? But hey, ladies,
at least we don't have whale teeth around our bodies. Yeah,
or like steal, well we have underwire. At least we
don't have whale teeth. Yes, there we go, ladies. Gender
is a gender wage, Yeah, getting you down. At least
(17:45):
we don't have whale teeth. Put that on a T shirt.
So we hope that you enjoyed this edition of the
Boys of Summer. If you'd like to write us moms Stuff.
Discovery dot Com is where you can send your letter.
You can also hit us up on Facebook. You're gonna
want to follow us on Facebook this summer. That's all
(18:06):
I'm gonna say. Um, And before we get to a
couple of letters that you have sent us, going to
take just a quick break and then we'll get right back.
And now back to our letters. I have one here
from Caitlin. She says, I work as a legal assistant
and deal primarily in f I n r A securities arbitrations.
(18:31):
I throw those words around all the time to Caitlin,
So I go through a lot of new account forms
and financial documents. In general, you would be absolutely amazed
to see how often men control their wives investment accounts.
They always open accounts on the same day. One time
we went to hearing and the wife had checked off
speculation as her investment objective and claimed her level of
(18:51):
investment expertise was excellent. Well, she lost a ton of
money because her husband and son in law were trading
in her account and she allowed them to. It was
pathetic to see her testify, quote, my daddy and husband
have always controlled my investments. Well, then she should have
dealt with her loss, and she had no problem spending
money when her boys speculation paid off. Unfortunately, the arbitration
(19:14):
panel awarded her a back portion of the money she lost.
Worst part one of the panelists was a woman made
me want to puke. Wow. Thanks for the story, Caitlin Well.
I got an email here from Rose who is writing
a response to our episode on men in Anorexia because
she wanted to share a bit of her story about
(19:34):
recovering from anorexia. So a little bit of a trigger
warning here for people who might have struggled with eating disorders.
But she writes, I really really appreciate you saying that
anorexia is not about losing weight. It's not that at all.
It's about control. You feel scared and stressed about something
in your life, and you channel those emotions into the
one thing you can you can control, which is your body.
(19:57):
And she goes on to talk about how a lot
of times people might not realize to the length of
time that a lot of antorect x will struggle with
their eating disorder, and how she bottomed out with her
weight over a four month period, and she says this
short four month period with the flashy numbers about how
low my weight was is what most people think of
(20:18):
is interorexia. However, this is not the only interorexia. It's
also all the years leading up to that, when I
would look in every single mirror around to see if
I looked fat, when I jiggled my leg every time
I sat to burn more calories. And it's when I
thought and even calmly accepted the fact that I die
alone because I was so fat and hideous. But since
my b and I is normal and I hit it well,
(20:39):
no one ever knew that I was interactic. So I'm
sorry for this rather depressing read. But I thought that
you would be someone who, being interested in equality in
women's rights in general, would be interested to hear some
common misconceptions. Um So I really wanted to thank her
for her letter, and even if it might be on
a sadder topic, I think it is important to take
(21:02):
into account with issues of that that it's not just
something that you snap out of. That there is a timeline,
you know, from both before maybe the visible symptoms become
more apparent to people around you and how you know
it can be an ongoing struggle. So and and again,
for anyone listening who might be struggling with eating disorders.
(21:24):
UM highly recommend you going to the National Eating Disorders
Association's website online to find resources to get some help
because it is something that you can recover from. So
with that again, send us to your letters. If you'd
like to email us, mom Stuff at discovery dot com
is where you can do it. You can also message
(21:44):
us on Facebook and tweet us at mom Stuff podcast,
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(22:07):
You and subscribe for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Doesn't have stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From House Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and this is the inaugural episode of
our Boys of Summer series. Yes, because we both love
Don Henley. That's right, that's all this episode is about. Yes,
(00:27):
it's gonna be a four episode long series on the
artistry of Don Henley. No, just kidding. We wanted to
do a series during June highlighting men who have made
significant contributions to the lives of women in various ways.
So throughout June we are going to highlight four Boys
(00:51):
of Summer and we're kicking off this week with Frons
designer Paul Poire. And while I don't know that Poire
is so so much a a gender equality champion or
anything like that, he did, however, unlaced women from the corsets.
(01:12):
He helped us breathe easier. Thank goodness. Yeah, this guy
had pretty humble beginnings in a working class Parisian family.
He was born in eighteen seventy nine to a cloth merchant,
so he sort of had an in already into the
design world. He became one of the twentieth century's greatest coturiers,
(01:33):
Is that right, Yeah, yeah, Okay, I'm pretending like I
know French. Okay, So he actually used his natural charisma
to gain entry into some of the most exclusive atliers
of the Belly Park. And basically an italier is it's
French for workshop, and it's where you would go if
(01:56):
you were an up and coming fashion designer, and you
would basically make designs alongside and with more important fashion
designers like Project Runway. Yeah, kind of like a fashion guild.
So he starts out he's working for other designers, he's
not necessarily working for himself, but immediately he starts shaking
things up. And in nineteen oh three, Poay created a
(02:20):
coat based on the shape of a kimono, and it
was indicative of the fashions he would eventually promote and
popularised throughout his career, things that were looser and that flowed.
He said that he'd become tired of the dominant aesthetic.
All that was soft, washed out and insipid was held
in honor. He thought, basically that all wealthy woman women
look the same, all corseted and wearing all those heavy,
(02:43):
ruffled things. Yeah, there is this anecdote about him going
to this fancy Parisian cafe and walking in and seeing
these very well dressed women sitting at a table. But
he thought to himself, I would have no idea how
to tell you to a part. There's there's no character
or individuality at all in the clothes that you're wearing.
(03:06):
And so we're gonna get to how He eventually was like,
you know what, ladies, let's take off that corset. But
for a little bit of bra history to understand just
how significant it is that we finally stopped wearing corsets.
Not surprisingly, the bra, the brazier, the boob holder, has
(03:31):
been around for a really, really, really long time. Historians
trace it back to b C. When Minoan women on
the island of Crete were tightly fitted bands across their
waists to hoist up that bad breasts. Yeah, so we
had push up bras starting in ancient times and then
course it's entered the picture around sixteen hundred. They were
(03:52):
made from stiffened linen and wood horn metal or whale teeth,
So right away, undergarments are incredibly comfortable, yes, because there's
nothing nothing that takes you through the day quite like
whale teeth holding your boob up. That's right, just crunching
down on your ribs. And now the early versions, though
of course it's were called stays. The word corset did
(04:14):
not come into general use until the late eighteenth century,
just little little grammar notes and etymological origins, because core
is the French word for body, and corsett it's like
a little body because you're being freaking shrunk by whale teeth.
It's it's a precious etymology for a not so precious garment,
(04:35):
but it's it wasn't just meant to create that tiny waste.
It was also meant to support the very heavy garments
of the time. Edwardian dress was super heavy, made of
these very thick fabrics. It was uncomfortable and an outfit
for a woman could weigh pounds easily. It's like carrying
(04:57):
around a toddler, Yeah, all the time on you. Well,
I guess, I mean, I don't know, tyler that holds
your boobs all over baby Bjorn, Yeah, exactly. So stuff
gets real. In eighteen sixteen, when French corsetier Leroy I
read the first is Leroy, I'm like, oh, the redneck
(05:18):
French corset Roy set out to France Tonic a course it,
so he invents the divorce courset, which separates and pushes
the breasts upward using padded iron or steel. And I
think it was around this point when something called the
divorce corset was manufactured that women and some men were like, okay, y'all,
(05:43):
things are getting a little crazy. And from while all
of this is going on, when we have now the
evolution from corset to the brazier. In the background, from
eighteen fifty to around nineteen fourteen, we have the dress
reform movement going on because there were people so radical,
folks who were thinking for not only women's but also
(06:04):
men's fashion as well. That okay, people, we were wearing
a lot of clothes. They're very heavy, they're so expensive.
What can we do? This is absolutely ridiculous. And there
were actually branches of them specifically focused on underwear reform,
which I love. I would love to go to those meetings. Yeah,
and underwear Reform has some coffee and pastry at an
underwear meeting. Well. Basically, underwear Reform advocated for everyone to
(06:27):
just wear union suits, which were like those onesies, you know,
those long john Yeah, there was who was it, Rebecca
Taylor no, Susan Taylor, Excuse me? Was her name? Was
this woman who advocated for the emancipation suit, which would
have been a replacement for all the women's corsets, bustles, crinoline,
et cetera. And you just wear a lady's union suit.
(06:49):
I liked it. I bet that gets warm, though my
mother would not enjoy that. No, that's a union suit.
Still sounds like too much to me, But wow, that
social movement is simmering in the back ground. In eighteen
eighty nine, we have Hermione Cadole, who opened up a
shop in Paris and she is attributed with selling the
first bra. It was a part of a two piece
(07:11):
underwear set. Scandalous. Yes, it was called as su Tien's Gorge.
And I know that I'm mangling that French, but I
wanted to say that because it's French for a throat support.
Oh okay, yeah, so bras literally a throat support, all right?
Well so in Marie too sec patented the first bra.
(07:34):
But meanwhile, throughout the eighteen nineties, artist Charles Dana Gibson
had popularized the s shaped silhouette of the Gibson girl
using a corset in a bustle, so like you're you've
got this tiny waist, but you're you're jutted out in
the front and then your butt sticking up in the back,
and it's very unnatural, and I'm sure there were a
lot of back pain going on. But it wasn't until
(07:54):
seven at the word brazier and enters the lexicon when
Vogue uses it for the first time, and all Parae
really was it's champion. He was the first to realize
the potential of fashion without corsets. And we'll go into
more detail and how Parae really popularized the no corset
look in high fashion, which then trickled down to lower fashion,
(08:17):
because at this point too, we start to have a
shift to where fashion becomes more democratized, where it's not
just really wealthy women who can look good, but the
styles change to where women of all means can look good.
This also will start to talk about the mass production
of goods. We have urbanization, all these things that are
(08:39):
starting to kick up. And on July nine, Mary Phelps
Jacob under the name Caress Crosby, patented a design for
the Broad not the first broad design, but it's the
design that would be the most widely used. It was
the closest thing at this point to a broad as
(09:00):
we would wear today. Yeah, silk handkerchiefs and a ribbon.
She developed it to wear under an evening gown after
her course. It kind of you know, it was was
readily seen under the dress. It was too scandalous. So
she made a little bra out of Hanky's little hanky bra.
She was a socialite, f y. I yeah, well so
(09:21):
talking about the whole fashion effects society and society effects
fashion and like world events make changes happen. That was
That was a delicate way of saying all that. Well,
so we have World War One and during this period
of course, it's really fall out of favor and they're
replaced by bras and girdles. But what helped that along.
Not only was it designers like Parae, but in nine
(09:43):
seventeen we have the U. S. War Industries Board, which
asked women to stop buying courses to save metal, and
boy did they They ended up saving twenty eight thousand
tons enough to build two battleships. Which is Craig, Craig
you if you ask me, so, how is Poiae influencing things? Well,
(10:05):
he is not only paying attention to the influence of
simplicity on cut and form. You have functionalism taking over
from art new vaux. Essentially, lines everywhere are becoming simpler.
The Gibson girl is falling out of fashion, and you
(10:26):
have the what will become afterwards, those straighter lines of
you think of the new woman of the flapper area
where women would actually bind their breasts down to look
as flat chested as possible. Um. And so Parade was
essentially riding a social wave and it was kind of
(10:48):
a confluence of a number of different forces, and he
happened to be the one with the vision for fashion
to say, oh, you know what, I'm going to put
together entire catalog based around this look. Well as part
of that catalog that I'll talk about in just a second. Um,
he really put the influence not only on simplicity of
(11:10):
cut and form, but brighter colors, boulder patterns, and lighter fabrics.
And around this time, uh, there was a focus on
function and form because, like Christen said, we had rapid
urbanization and increased popularity of sports like tennis, cycling, and
golf that created a need for clothes that allowed greater movement.
So Paray's view was simple. Elaborate underwear spoiled the line
(11:36):
of women's clothes. To him, it wasn't just so people
are playing tennis now, it's like, no, my designs, my simple, unstructured,
unfussy designs, are being ruined by the corset. And so
amid all of these social and fashion changes, his new
groundbreaking catalog, illustrated by JP, ended up revolutionizing fashion and
(12:00):
ash and illustration one of his dresses, the design for
a white dress in the Hellenic style was just a
tubular shape with a high waist that had no need
for hoops or a corset. Yeah. He also was a
big fan side note of turbans in place of large hats,
hair and pants under tunics for Downton Abbey fans. You
(12:20):
might remember where the youngest daughter debuts her new hair
and pant outfit and everyone was like, oh my goodness.
And yeah, there was definitely an outcry over those hair
and pants as quote a dangerous appropriation of the male prerogative. Um.
But I mean in thinking about the massive impact of
(12:42):
this catalog that Poiret put out, because we might think, well,
he's just one guy, how could he have that much influence? Well,
at the time, he was known as the king of fashion,
and I'm trying to think of modern day equivalent to that.
And I'm trying to think of a modern day equivalent
to that. I don't know. Maybe it's like if Mark Jacobs,
for instance, who has a major influence from high to
(13:04):
lower fashion, came out with something shocking that would make
international fashion news. All pants have inner tubes built in
pants are the new shirt? I love it well. So.
Emma West, in a paper called a Modernist Mode Fashion
(13:24):
nineteen and the Limits of Modernism, wrote that if fashionist
scene is a way of externalizing oneself, then wearing these
modern fashions would have been a big part of how
women expressed their modernity. She says. Moreover, Parais designs also
helped women embrace a modern lifestyle. With this emphasis, she
talks about on you know, his loose, comfortable clothes that
(13:47):
actually made sports and oh, I don't know, like walking possible.
She said, for the first time, women could fully negotiate
the speed and terrain of the modern city. Fashion change
the way that women interacted with an experience to modernity,
because now you're not wearing a corset and tight pound
(14:07):
toddler clothes you're less likely I would think to like
pass out in the streets. Well, and she also points
out how many different factors when you sum it all up,
combined to spark this idea for Parree, which includes technological innovation, urbanization. Sports.
You know, everyone was all of a sudden golfing and
(14:29):
playing tennis. You have the bicycle, Suffragism was happening, functionalism, cubism, exoticism,
as you see with pulling in more Eastern styles with
hair and vants and turbans. All of these factors combine
and it's kind of incredible. And so Poire is left
behind this legacy of free women from the corset because
(14:50):
he advocated for the brazier to replace it. But Poire
got the last laugh in terms of of confining women
to to clothes that restricted their movement. He introduced the
hobble skirt, which was a vertical, tight bottomed style and
he said, quote, I freed the bust and I shackled
(15:11):
the legs. Well, okay, so even if you can't take
long strides, at least you can take a deep breath.
Sure sure well, And which had a longer lasting impact
the hobble skirt or not having to wear a corset.
Oh yeah, because I still wear a hobble skirt. I
know the answer to that question. I'll tell you what
(15:31):
Carolina hobble skirt on public transit. That is, I've missed
so many trains. New Week hold on um I found.
I found a really fantastic article from nineteen seventy six
that was talking about an exhibition of Para's clothes in
New York UM and this quote from Robert Riley, who
(15:55):
was the director of the Design Lab of Fit Fashion
Institute of Technologg at the time, said that for a
thousand years women had worn structured clothing, and corsets were
from the knees to the armpits. And he threw that
out the window. He must have scared women to death.
When he visited the United States, there was a great
(16:16):
hue and cry. Parae was destroying women's morals. Women were
showing their ankles for the first time. But sad end
to the story is that even though Parae, you know,
revolutionized fashion in this major way that had a huge
historical significance, he died penniless. Like after the war, with
(16:38):
mass production entering into fashion, he didn't want to conform.
He wanted to continue working on couture clothes, and the
economics just weren't there. And I think the last time
the New York Times reported on Hi, while I was
still alive, he was working as a bartender, and and
then he died poor and kind of faded away, and
(17:01):
I just randomly ran across him, and I didn't know
the story about him. I'm sure fashion buffs out there
have heard of Portree, but we thought that he would
be a fun one to kick off the Boys of
Summer series because it's an interesting snippet of how one
person's major contribution, summed up in one fashion catalog really
(17:24):
change things. No, I'm sure there are some women saying, well,
we're still wearing bras, how about that? But hey, ladies,
at least we don't have whale teeth around our bodies. Yeah,
or like steal, well we have underwire. At least we
don't have whale teeth. Yes, there we go, ladies. Gender
is a gender wage, Yeah, getting you down. At least
(17:45):
we don't have whale teeth. Put that on a T shirt.
So we hope that you enjoyed this edition of the
Boys of Summer. If you'd like to write us moms Stuff.
Discovery dot Com is where you can send your letter.
You can also hit us up on Facebook. You're gonna
want to follow us on Facebook this summer. That's all
(18:06):
I'm gonna say. Um, And before we get to a
couple of letters that you have sent us, going to
take just a quick break and then we'll get right back.
And now back to our letters. I have one here
from Caitlin. She says, I work as a legal assistant
and deal primarily in f I n r A securities arbitrations.
(18:31):
I throw those words around all the time to Caitlin,
So I go through a lot of new account forms
and financial documents. In general, you would be absolutely amazed
to see how often men control their wives investment accounts.
They always open accounts on the same day. One time
we went to hearing and the wife had checked off
speculation as her investment objective and claimed her level of
(18:51):
investment expertise was excellent. Well, she lost a ton of
money because her husband and son in law were trading
in her account and she allowed them to. It was
pathetic to see her testify, quote, my daddy and husband
have always controlled my investments. Well, then she should have
dealt with her loss, and she had no problem spending
money when her boys speculation paid off. Unfortunately, the arbitration
(19:14):
panel awarded her a back portion of the money she lost.
Worst part one of the panelists was a woman made
me want to puke. Wow. Thanks for the story, Caitlin Well.
I got an email here from Rose who is writing
a response to our episode on men in Anorexia because
she wanted to share a bit of her story about
(19:34):
recovering from anorexia. So a little bit of a trigger
warning here for people who might have struggled with eating disorders.
But she writes, I really really appreciate you saying that
anorexia is not about losing weight. It's not that at all.
It's about control. You feel scared and stressed about something
in your life, and you channel those emotions into the
one thing you can you can control, which is your body.
(19:57):
And she goes on to talk about how a lot
of times people might not realize to the length of
time that a lot of antorect x will struggle with
their eating disorder, and how she bottomed out with her
weight over a four month period, and she says this
short four month period with the flashy numbers about how
low my weight was is what most people think of
(20:18):
is interorexia. However, this is not the only interorexia. It's
also all the years leading up to that, when I
would look in every single mirror around to see if
I looked fat, when I jiggled my leg every time
I sat to burn more calories. And it's when I
thought and even calmly accepted the fact that I die
alone because I was so fat and hideous. But since
my b and I is normal and I hit it well,
(20:39):
no one ever knew that I was interactic. So I'm
sorry for this rather depressing read. But I thought that
you would be someone who, being interested in equality in
women's rights in general, would be interested to hear some
common misconceptions. Um So I really wanted to thank her
for her letter, and even if it might be on
a sadder topic, I think it is important to take
(21:02):
into account with issues of that that it's not just
something that you snap out of. That there is a timeline,
you know, from both before maybe the visible symptoms become
more apparent to people around you and how you know
it can be an ongoing struggle. So and and again,
for anyone listening who might be struggling with eating disorders.
(21:24):
UM highly recommend you going to the National Eating Disorders
Association's website online to find resources to get some help
because it is something that you can recover from. So
with that again, send us to your letters. If you'd
like to email us, mom Stuff at discovery dot com
is where you can do it. You can also message
(21:44):
us on Facebook and tweet us at mom Stuff podcast,
and if you want to keep up with us on Tumbler,
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else to YouTube dot com, slash stuff mom Never Told
(22:07):
You and subscribe for more on this and thousands of
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