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Build it Beautiful. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History
Class from hot works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
(00:23):
the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
We have an interview today and I'll tell you how
this came about because it was one of those things
that was serendipitous and delightful and philly with squealing happiness.
So back in the fall of last year, there was
a book that arrived at my desk. And this is
nothing new because we are often sent books by publishers
for review as possible interview subjects. But this book was
(00:47):
a little bit different one. It is huge. It was
like a massive box that came and to Once I
opened this parcel, which was quite heavy, I saw the
book within and then it was this incredible book of
historical fashion plates. It's titled fashion Plates one and fifty
Years of Style, and the writer, April Callaghan, is a
fashion historian and a special Collections Associate at the Fashion
(01:10):
Institute of Technology. So she really knows her stuff. And
so I opened this book and I started to page
through it, and I just fell in love with it.
I found it utterly enchanting because not only is it
pictures of historical clothing, which everyone knows I love, but
this is so gorgeous. And we talked about it a
little bit in the interview coming up, but like the
printing on it is absolutely exquisite. It is like just
(01:31):
a fine art book. It's really really gorgeous, uh. And
it is so pretty that the other house stove work
staffers started kind of wandering over to my desk to
see what I was gasping over, and then they started gasping,
and Julie Douglass and I stood there for a long
time paging through this thing and just being amazed at
how absolutely gorgeous it is and how much really cool
(01:52):
information is contained in it. And so of course, I
as soon as I was able to tear myself away
from it, I shot off an email to ask if
April would join us on the show, and then when
she responded, she surprised me a little by mentioning that
she had also just published another book, which is titled
Fashion in the Art of Pochoi the Golden Age of
(02:13):
Illustration in Paris. Uh So I was like, great, we'll
talk about both of those books. So for those of
you who are into historical fashion or even simply art,
you are going to be delighted to hear her insights
on both clothing and culture as well as art throughout history.
And she's incredibly well spoken and she shares some really
great insights. First up, this talk covers just exactly how
(02:35):
somebody becomes a fashion historian, which a lot of listeners
have expressed to us as their greame job, and how
having a job at the Fashion Institute of Technology leads
to some really exciting moment. Now that I am lucky
(02:58):
enough to have April cow Him on the line for
an interview, we're going to get right to talking about
some of the amazing work she has been doing. And
right out of the gate, I will tell you that
one of the things I love in your Fashion Plates book,
the dedication says this book is dedicated to those people
who know what they love to do, but haven't quite
found their way. Be fearless. It seems like you have
(03:18):
clearly found what you love to do. So before we
start talking about the books and historical fashion. Can you
just tell us kind of what drew you to historical
fashion in the first place, and how you managed to
make this into a career. Sure, yes, I'm first of all,
I just want to say thank you so much for
having me. I'm I'm really delighted to be on the show.
I'm actually a fan, so it's a great compliment. UM. Yeah,
(03:42):
So kind of how I ended up where I am
here is UM. From a very very young age, I
always was really drawn to an interest in the kind
of hidden story behind objects. UM. Who created them, Why,
who who owned them? How, what does those objects mean
to their owners? And how does that kind of speak
(04:04):
to a creation of not only like an individual but
also a cultural identity UM. And my interest in that
kind of led me to study art history UM, and
I did an undergraduate degree in art history, and then
after I graduated, I ended up working in contemporary art
foundations and galleries as an assistant director for almost ten years.
(04:24):
But at some point along the way there, I started
to get a little bit of an itch to explore
some other interests, but I wasn't certain what those interests
were yet, And one day I just happened to stumble
across a book that kind of changed the course of
my life professionally from that point forward. And it was
the catalog to the Kyoto Costume Institute. UM So it's
(04:47):
a costume collection in Kyoto, Japan, and the book is
published by Passion. It's pretty widely available. But I have
to laugh because I have and adore that book. It's
really great. So I understand how it was life changing,
because it's really amazing. I mean, I devoured their presentation
of the history of fashion from the eighteenth to the
(05:08):
twentieth century and in like a twenty four hour period
um And from that point forward, I kind of knew
what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,
and I applied to graduate program here in New York
UM in Fashion and Textile Territorial Studies. So really, until
I encountered that book, I I didn't realize that one
could actually study fashion, that the field of fashion studies existed,
(05:31):
and that one you could really use an object based
approach to analyze the motives and really even the technologies
of a society that that created the object. That's so cool,
And like I said, I love that book. So I
really do completely understand how it is fantastic. I've given
that book as a gift to so many people. Well,
(05:52):
and I actually received it as a gift, so it's
perfect to me. That is like a perfect gift book.
And now you work in special collections at the Fashionist Technology. Uh,
so do you ever stumble across any fabulous fashion surprises
And how specifically did you end up there? Um? Well, actually,
how I ended up here was I did go to
(06:12):
graduate school here at f I T. UM. I went
back for a little while to working um in art
here in New York, and as I started working on
these books, UM, I was delving into this collection specifically
a lot, and so I was hanging around a lot
and eventually they asked me if I want to come
on board. So um, But in terms of of finding
(06:35):
really fun things within the collection, yes, this happens frequently. Um.
It's our collection here f I T is really quite robust.
We have about thirty five hundred linear feet of rare
books and periodicals specifically on the topics of fashion and design.
And we also have more than three hundred and fifty
(06:57):
manuscript collections. And when I say manuscript collections, I mean
unpublished materials. So in the context of the types of
things that we collect, that really means designer archives, and
within our paper designer archives, we estimate we have about
half of a million original works on paper, most of
which are design our sketches. So one of my most
(07:20):
serendipitous surprises that I've had recently kind of pertains to
these sketch collections and um a few months ago, I
had posted on our Instagram feed of photographs, is this
really beautiful evening dress by the couturier Lucile, And I
had found the photograph in the nineteen seventeen issue of
the French fashion magazine lay Mode, which is one of
the rare periodicals that we have here. But the following week,
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I just happened to be leading a class visit with
graduate students and I had randomly gone back in the
collections room and pulled a box of sketches from the many,
many boxes of with skills sketches that we have. I
opened the box in front of the graduate students. The
first sketch I turned to just happened to be the
original sketch for the dress that I had posted on
(08:06):
Instagram the week before. Oh my goodness, what are the
chances of that happening? And that's really kind of something
that speaks to the vast and the scope um of
of what we have here. Oh, that's spectacular. I would
imagine that's one of those things where sometimes you have
to make yourself leave at the end of the day. Yeah,
(08:27):
because it's every single day when I come to work.
I love it. It's like a treasure hunt all the time.
That always pays off, it seems. Um. So you have
two books out right now that are are fresh releases,
both about fashion history and specifically fashion illustration. So since
they came out like one right after the other, I mean,
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it's only a couple of weeks that separated their publication dates. Um,
did you work on those concurrently or did you have
this kind of silo it and do one and then
the other. I actually did not work on them con currently. Um.
I pretty much wrote them back to back. But it
just happened to be an odd twist of fate that
they ended up coming out at the same time. I
wish I was that much of a powerhouse of a
(09:10):
writer to be able to do to work on two
books at the same time, But I am not so
when you're working on a book like this, which here's
where it really gets to be a little powerhouse ee
in my head. Writing of course takes a lot of work,
but to me, sifting through source material and the rich
source material you had for each of these um is
a huge task. And so when you're compiling books like this,
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when you're curating collections, uh, what is that process? Like?
Like how do you start? Where do you do you
have a vision when you begin, and does it stay
the same or how much does it evolve as you go?
And like how long does it really take you to
kind of create a cohesive assortment and cull the ones
that don't quite fit and go through that whole process.
(09:54):
Mm hmmm. Um. Well, since I really am like quite
literally physically immersed in the mid aerials every day when
I come to work. Um, for me, it's just kind
of more about living with the materials at hand for
a while and then starting to see where there is
an abundance of subject matter that coincides with a gap
in whatever the current publishing or scholarships that's happening is.
(10:18):
And then once you make that connection, it's really about
just diving into the original primary source materials from the period,
and then letting the materials tell you their story. Um.
Everyone has their own way of working, of course, but
personally I photograph obsessively. And one would think that this
(10:38):
is kind of a simple proposition, But when you are
working with a large amount of historic materials within a
really massive collection, just having a simple image on your
screen or on your page really isn't enough information for
you work from. UM. You have to record all of
its metadata. And what I mean by that is you
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know what public key shition is it from what was
the date, who is the artist, who is a photographer? Um?
And on a lot of this is in order to
be an effective researcher later when you go back to
evaluate your pool of images that you start with. First
of all, you need to know where to be returned
to in order to relocate that image again after you've
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been doing research. UM. And this is really super important
when you have a pool of say six thousand images
that you start with, which is essentially what I began
with when I started image selection for the Fashion Plates book.
So we called that down from six thousand to two hundreds.
That seems like it would be terribly painful. Our moments.
(11:41):
I'm not gonna lie where it is very pretty heartbreaking
when you have to cut something that you love. Well,
then that's my next question. Are you good about killing
your darlings and cutting those things that you just are
in love with but they maybe aren't the right fit
and kind of admitting that to yourself or is it
like a did you ever find yourself in the back
of your head knowing the right decision was, but still
holding onto something that maybe you just were really attached to,
(12:06):
you know, I think I'd become better about it UM,
And I think when I went into the second book UM,
I had a better clearly defined set of parameters that
we agreed upon before we started working with our image
pool UM, and those parameters first being that specific images
(12:26):
ability to advance forward the story that we're trying to
weave together by putting the images together, and then once
we kind of have an idea of what we want
and and also how those things, you know, work visually together.
Copyright we have to copy right. So with the type
of books that I do UM, which are considered illustrated books,
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this can really be a defining factor in which images
ultimately appear. So, for instance, uh for Fashion in the
Art of Pushbar, which I wrote with my fantastic co
author Cassidy Zachary Um one of our very, very favorite
illustrators of this entire time period. His name um was
Andre Edouard Martie and his work has not transitioned into
(13:12):
the public domain. And because um, the more of his
work that we wanted to use, we were going to
have to pay um youth these for due to budget constraints,
we could not include as many of his illustrations in
the book, says if we would have liked was that
ever freeing to be like the universe is deciding this
for me, I don't have to make this cut, and
(13:34):
it's freeing as much as it was painful at other times. Yes, Oh,
I can't even imagine it. I cannot imagine having to
call a collection of gorgeous fashion plates down without going
slightly mad or becoming really melancholy in the process. So
it was good to hear from someone that has done
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that how she sort of handled it. I know, I
get way to attached to things that I think are
beautiful to ever really be able to do that with
any sort of grace. We are going to hear more
from April about her book on posh wire, and she's
going to describe exactly what that is in just a moment.
But first we will have a word from one of
the fabulous sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history
(14:15):
class on the air. Alrighty, as promised, Tracy, do you
want to know what posch I do? In fact, all right,
let's do it. So you brought up your book about poshoir,
so I wanted to ask you if you would explain
for our listeners what posch war actually is. Certainly, of
(14:38):
course they'd be happy to um. So pushwar literally is
the French word for stenfil Um and senfiling as an
image making technique has has existed for thousands of years,
and we see employed in prehistoric cave painting. Many millennia
later in the Middle Ages, UM oftentimes people who did
not know how to read or write would use a
stencil as a means of signing legal documents. UM in
(14:59):
the sixteenth cent was often used to create playing cards.
But um really as a widespread technique we really start
to see emerge in the nineteenth century, where it was
used by Japanese artisans for creating um and decorating housewears,
fans and chimono, so they were using it in textile
design UM, and so they really cultivated the Japanese this
(15:22):
technique over over several hundred years, and as a lot
of imported goods from Japan became quite fashionable in Europe
during the latter portion of the nineteenth century. UM it's
around this time that European printers also kind of start
to experiment with the technique and they really refined it
even further for the purposes of not printing on textiles
(15:43):
but book publishing. UM and the technique of pushbar really
sort of reached just apotheosis under the guidance and refinement
of a gentleman whose name was Jean Sauda. UM. To
this day, Sauda is really kind of considered the authority
on the pushwar technique. And it's the reason for this
(16:03):
is because how he thought about color UM was really
quite advanced. So how the pushwar process UM worked was
an artist or an illustrator would submit to Sade and
his his Pushwar studio an original work on paper, and
this was the original work that ultimately they wanted to
reproduce in a book or an album. Or UM. You know,
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let's say a periodical and the image would be really, really,
reallyly rigorously scrutinized for its color separations. Then a decap
or a cutter would create stencils, at least one stencil
for each color appearing within an image, and oftentimes, because
(16:48):
of the complexity of an image, there may be more
than one stencil cut for the color red. UM copper
and zinc were pretty much the favorite materials used to
create the physical sensil itself, and then once these were realized,
they would be handed off to a color east or
colorist UM who would painstakingly and really really rigorously giving
(17:14):
care to the registration of the sensils. They would apply
water based pigments or guash directly to the page to
create the image. UM colorists had quite a variety of
brushes and techniques that were available UM for their disposal
in order to recreate as faithfully as possible the artist
(17:35):
original works, and this was really one of the aspects
of pushbar that was treasured. These images are essentially semi
unique works of art on paper. This was really labor
intensive UM and in turn that made it very expensive
to produce and so at this level of kind of
(17:56):
really refined level of pushbar. It was really only used
for limited addition publications, and there was a certain cashe
at the time surrounding its exclusivity. Luxury fashion publications especially
embraced the technique really kind of as a foil to
the easily reproduced nature of fashion photography. So it was
(18:20):
kind of a reaction um to the rise of fashion photography.
People were returning back to the handmade and it creates
such stunning effects. That's sort of it's really beautiful, like
the way things are layered together, and as you said,
it's a complete art in and of itself. And what
I think is interesting about illustration in general is that
(18:42):
in some cases, particularly in fashion, these illustrations of historical
fashions have really sort of become even more iconic than
the clothing. And what jumped to mind for me was
Paul pour A who we've talked about on the podcast,
and Paul rieb uh. So for people who aren't especially
into fashion and and history, they will sometimes recognize the
(19:03):
sketches with some level of familiarity, but if you showed
them a photograph of the garment, they're like, I don't
know what that is UM, but so that in some
ways the imagery and the sketch work has sort of
superseded the clothing that it was meant to represent. Do
you think any of those illustrators, particularly in the early
nineteen hundreds, ever really conceived the possibility that their work
(19:26):
would be the more enduring part of the equation rather
than the clothing. They did, at least some of them did,
And I'm saying yes, because depending on what publication that
that particular artists or illustrator was working for, their work
may have never actually existed in physical form in terms
of it being a garment. UM. Some of the garments
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we see in some of these illustrations were always intentionally
purely the invention of the illustrator, and they were actually
kind of meant to inspire the direction of fashion. So
they weren't necessarily reflecting what current fashion was, but they
were meant to inspire the future direction of fashion. UM.
(20:09):
That being said, UM, certain publications were also underwritten by
some of the could tour houses UM. And if there
was a tour house underwriting that publication, the publication usually
featured illustrations of their designs their underwriters almost exclusively UM
and this is the case, and give a du Bonton
(20:30):
and give that du Bonton would UM pair specific illustrators
with specific designers, and they would have an ongoing relationship
for for years at a time sometimes UM. But some
examples of the garments that we see, and some of
these illustrations still do exist in museum collections UM. Specifically
some of the quare addresses that are illustrated by a
(20:52):
rebe UM, those are still there's extant examples of them
in French museum collections. And here at f I T
we actually have one of the coats that are read
illustrates for Lebrobe de papa UM. We have it in
a different color way UM, and it reads illustration. It's yellow,
but the museum's collection UM example is in black. So
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it's a little bit of yes and a little bit
of no the answer the question yes. Sometimes sometimes they
knew that that their designs were only ever going to
exist on the page, and and sometimes they were also
illustrating UM specific German. Well, and it's interesting too to
think about, you know, clothing that gets worn, even if
it's only for a short time, it's sort of suffers
(21:35):
its own use in some degree. Where you know, textiles
tend to break down. Paper has always sort of survived
a little bit more, not always, but overall, I would
say there, you know, we have more examples of art
from various periods than we have the actual clothing that's intact,
So it would make sense from that point of view.
It just fascinates me that, particularly with Paul Parret. I mean,
(21:55):
I remember when we were researching that episode. I would
show people pictures of the dresses and the like, what
is this weird dress? I don't I've never seen this,
And I would show them an illustration of like the
same or a very similar dress, and like, I've seen
that art. I'm like, I know, how did that separation exist? Um?
And one thing that's interesting, and you mentioned at the
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time that most of this art was sort of aspirational
and sort of to drive the direction of the future
of fashion. That you know, now a separate artist doing
fashion illustration for someone is much more unheard of. So
as it's evolved away from that idea of partnerships between
illustrators and clothing designers, Uh, why do you think it
(22:37):
actually started to do that? Where now designers pretty much
also have to be artists. For the most part. M H.
And you know, here's the thing. It's a curious thing.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I
don't know that that partnership has necessarily dissolved as much
as we think that it has. UM. Historically, not all
fashion designers have sketch before they created their collection. UM.
(23:00):
This was not necessarily part of many of the great
fashion designers at the past. UM. Some designers even specifically
employed sketch artists as part of their team to document
their collections after the fact UM, rather than photographed them
because at certain periods of time to photograph them would
(23:20):
have been more expensive than to have a sketch artist
on staff. UM. For instance, Uh, lucile lady Jeff Gordon,
who I mentioned earlier, UM, she actually had dedicated sketch
artists as part of her team, and one of them
happened to be Edward Molly and you who, UM, if
you know a lot about the history of fashion, he
actually went on to become a very very famous fashion
(23:42):
designer in his own right after kind of beginning his
career working for Lucile. UM. But still to this day,
I'm still bringing in fashion illustrations into our collection that
are not necessarily executed by the head designers themselves, but
other parties that are hired in UM to illustrate the
production of a specific, specific house UM. I think that
(24:06):
there's kind of beginning to be sort of a resurgence
of interest in fashion illustration UM as a reaction to
all the photographs bick images that were really bombarded with
every single day. And it's an interesting time period because
this really is kind of paralleling the interest in Pushbart
illustrations that was a counterpoint to the mass conversion to
(24:27):
a photography that we saw happen a century ago. I'm
starting to see this happen again, which is fascinating because
we're right out about a hundred years since this was
taking place then, so it's very very fascinating. I love
hearing the idea that fashion illustration existing separate from fashion
(24:50):
design is something that's having a resurgence. It was also
really interesting to hear about how illustrators of the early
Dreds viewed their work in relation to the clothing to
designers they were collaborating with. Yeah, I was surprised by that.
So next up the conversation is going to turn to
a little bit more general talk about fashion in the
context of cultural history. But first we're going to have
(25:13):
a word from one of our fabulous sponsors. Okay, next April,
we'll talk about fashion in a cultural context, and then
they will wrap up she and Holly with some advice
about how other people interested in fashion history might start
out if they are wanting to learn more. You mentioned
(25:36):
earlier in our discussion that you really love the idea
of objects and gleaning from them sort of their their
meaning in their context historically. So I'm curious what you
think fashion can really teach us about the culture and
time that it comes from because we approach it, how
shall we be looking at it to really interpret the
(25:56):
period that it existed in in a contemporary way? Sure? So,
I think one of the things that I first realized
when I really started studying fashion, and some of this
is a little bit school the obvious, but but how
inextricably tied fashion is to not only capitalism um but
also the passage of time um. In in the in
(26:18):
the Fashion Place book, I I use this little analogy
that admittedly is perhaps um on the verge of waxing
a little bit poetic, but I like this analogy UM.
I wrote something to the fact that UM. Fashion is
not only the devoted mistress of capitalism, constantly cannibalizing itself
and and and because of that, calling for a rapid
(26:39):
infusion of the new UM, but fashion is also concurrently
the sical wife of father time. You know, fashion is
always betraying his every movement with her incessant remake over
of the physical world. So I guess what I'm trying
to get at is that fashion, whether it be fashion
and close in colors, home goods, trends in food, or
(27:04):
even like the apps that are on your phone, all
of these things have a very specific place in this
broader fashion system, and our consumption of these things is
really directly connected to our personal politics visa VI. How
we decide to to vote for the creation of goods
UM that come into being via our exchange of monetary
(27:26):
currency for those things, right, We're voting with our dollar
when we buy things UM. So another another thing I
think that we can learn from about just looking at
fashion is you can always end up learning something about
the technology of the period UM because ultimately, how things
look UM is one of the factors that goes into
(27:50):
how things look is always going to be the technology
that was behind its creation. Um. For instance, the invention
of synthetic dies in in really changed the color palette
of the nineteenth late nineteenth century, And to me, this
is kind of a can to what I think may
happen very shortly here in terms of how three D
printing may very well revolutionize how we produce fashion in
(28:15):
the coming year. So cool. Um. I'm literally still paging
through your book while we talk, and I just keep
finding myself sighing and gasping, which makes me wonder because I,
of course I keep flipping to the late Victoria, late
bustle part of the Victorian era. What is your favorite
historical period in fashion? You were exposed to all of
it all the time, so surely you must have a favorite.
(28:38):
I do, But you know what that favorite is? It
shifts over time, and I kind of find I find
that question often depends on what I'm working on at
the moment. If I had to answer that question right now,
I would definitely say that the nineteen teens are at
the top of my list. But I also realized that
probably has a lot to do with the fact that
I've been working in that time period recently. But one
(29:00):
of the things that I love about the teens is
that it's really truly a pivotal point both in the
history of fashion itself and also fashion illustration. Um. This
is a time period when we start to see the
course it disappear, and of course, of course it had
dominated women's fashion and in some degrees men's fashion too,
and certain small segments um for four years UM. And
(29:24):
it's also a really pivotal point and how fashion illustration
changes with that collaboration that you referenced earlier between Pare
and a Reb. But UM. One of the other my
other interests in the teens is the fact that I
as a fashion historian, one of my specific um interests
(29:45):
is in the intersection of war and fashion, So the
French Revolution, World War One, world War two, UM, and
I feel very drawn to these questions around those time periods.
Is like, how is it that a specific society navigates
the exigencies of war um with the same time having
(30:05):
the very real need to put clothes on human bodies,
but also the economic imperatives of the fashion industry in
terms of keeping people employed and feeding their families during
these very difficult periods. And I think that the argument
that fashion is frivolists during periods of war begins to
melt away just a little bit, just a little bit
(30:27):
that when you realize that, for instance, during World War One,
approximately thirty of France's labor force was tethered in one
way or another to the fashion industry. UM. At that time,
France was the global arbiter of style. So it wasn't
only the jobs of let's say, couldture house workers that
(30:48):
were at stakes during World War One, but it was
also the entire textile industry, including die manufacturers and all
of these little offshoot industries such as lace makers and broiderers,
people who worked in the feather industries, first millinery, the list,
the list goes on. So when you think about these
(31:09):
intersections of war war in fashion, is it's not only
an aesthetic um choice that's happening, that there's an economic
imperative behind it. I love it. I have to wonder,
do you ever do any historical costuming? I don't, don't,
I don't. I'm terrible and terrible fashion. His story and
what no that that doesn't seem terrible at all to me.
(31:32):
I'm always a little bit just because of my own
like life context. When someone says, particularly someone who is
in interested in in fashion or whatever, says they don't,
So it seems so bizarre to me, Um, even though
it's not. But it's just because I've always been a
stitcher of my whole life, Like I started when I
was very very tiny. So like, of course you show
everybody said nobody sows okay, Um, but that's just my
(31:57):
own context that makes that seem weird. But no, I
I certainly know lots of people that are into fashion
and don't so, but part of it for me is
the drive, like I want that, so I have to
figure out how to make it. So there are plenty
of times when I look at a fashion plate and
was like, if I knew how to sell, I would
be wearing that to work tomorrow. What's really really fascinating
(32:17):
to me, Um, going back and occasionally looking at historical patterns.
I don't know how much pattern gazing you do. Um,
it's so fascinating because particularly and again I'll admit Victorian
is my favorite zone, but you'll look at these garments
and particularly in fashion plates, and be like, how on
earth did they ever do that? And then I'm always
sort of amazed at the beautiful simplicity of engineering that
(32:41):
usually goes into them. It's like, oh, this is not
a hard thing to cut out at all. It has
weird scenes that aren't like in the places we would
do modern garments, but it's usually so smart and so
much more simple than one would anticipate. Yet it creates
these incredible, beautiful drapes and shapes, and I'm always very
wow by this, the brilliance of the architecture a lot
(33:02):
of times of historical garments. Absolutely. Uh So, I know
we have a lot of listeners that are into fashion
and maybe don't uh know quite where to get started
looking into it. What would you recommend as a good
starting point for someone who wants to start looking into
fashion history, either for themselves or even as a potential
education and career path. Sure. Well, Um, there's not only
(33:26):
been an explosion of publishing on fashion studies, not only
fashion history but also fashion theory in the last decade,
and um, hand in hand with that, an explosion of
programs where you can actually go study fashion from a
scholarly perspective. Um. Here in New York at least, um,
there's a program at n Y U, there's a program
at Parsons. We have a graduate program here at f
(33:48):
I T. Those are just three in New York. UM.
There's many programs abroad in Europe, in London. UM. But
in terms of books, books of course would be the
easiest way to kind of get your feet wet. And
I mentioned earlier the book that I kind of led
me to being a fashion astorian. And you have a
copy of yourself, um, which is the Kyoto Costume Institute Catalog.
(34:08):
I think technically the name of it is something like
Fashion History from the eighteenth to twentieth century, something like that. Um. Yeah,
And I know I have the the paperback version, which
is two volumes, like it was two volumes in a
box sets. And I think that got a rename possibly,
so we'll look it up and put it in the
show notes. Okay, yeah. UM. There's another great book that's
(34:31):
a fantastic overview of fashion history that just came out
I think in October. It's called The History of Modern
Fashion and Spy Daniel Cole and Nancy Deal, and it
covers fashion from the birth of oat couture in the
eighteen fifties, UM, all the way into the twenty one century,
so it's a pretty wide spanning book. Um, those those
(34:52):
would be two of my top picks for just like
a very uh smart but easy overview of a lot
of time. Uh. Well in the Kyoto when I know
for sure like it's an easy entry because you'll first
just sit there slack jot at all the gorgeous photography
for a while and they now start reading the notes.
(35:13):
That book actually was a part the structure of it
was a little bit of my inspiration for how I
set up the Fashion Place book. Um, you have it
there in front of you, so you already know this.
But I didn't write text heavy chapters. Um. I really
wanted a lot of people, um, coming from lots of
different backgrounds or with a lot of different interests to
(35:37):
be able to access the book on whatever level that
they wanted. So I didn't want to do these text
heavy chapters. Instead, I kind of did vignettes and so
an image. Um, the fashion plate itself will be on
one page, and facing that will be a lot of
like contextualizing texts. Um. That may be about the history
of fashion that's portrayed in the fashion plate, it may
be about the social political um climate of that particular era.
(36:02):
It maybe at about art history, our technology of the
period that's kind of evidencing its hand within the fashion
plate um. But these things are really of upmot it's
importance to me um when when trying to understand what
fashion is true relevance is within any given era, It's
much broader than just the clothes themselves. It's all these
other things surrounding it that go into its creation. And
(36:25):
I would actually add your Fashion Plates book particularly to
a good starter point, because, as you said, it's so um.
It's laid out in such a way that it's kind
of easy to digest it in whatever manner you desire.
But it's kind of one of those things where even
if you start looking at the pictures when it first
came one of my colleagues, Julie Douglas, who works on
other podcasts of projects here at House to works, she
(36:48):
is into fashion, but it's not really into fashion history
so much. She just hasn't been exposed to it. We're
sitting there paging through it and gasping at the loveliness,
and then she would we would be gazing at a
picture and then she would finally I would see her
kind of drifting over to the text side and being like, oh,
now I understand, and so it's sort of a It
really is a beautiful kind of a way to introduce
(37:09):
people to some of the context socially, particularly that otherwise
you may miss just looking at the gorgeous pictures. So
thank you, Thank you so much for saying that, because
that was exactly my intent her success. Oh, April, thank
you so much for being with us. I cannot tell
you how much I appreciate your time and also just
getting to chat with you about fashion history. Thank you
(37:32):
so much for having me. It was a pleasure, and
I hope you enjoyed a book more. Oh, I'm sure
I will. I. I am going to take it home
from the office now that we're done with this, and
then I can truly devour it in my own time.
And I again, I super love it and really would
recommend it to anybody who is into fashion. The holidays
are over, but it would make a spectacular gift for anybody.
(37:53):
If you're late or if there's a birthday coming, do that, uh,
And otherwise, thank you so much for being here. Where
can people find you online? Um? I do have a
blog that I wrote right as part of um my
job here at f I T, which is called material
Mode UM. And you can just search Google search blog
(38:13):
material Mode f I T and I'm sure it'll come up. UM.
And then you can also follow us on Instagram. We
have a fantastic Instagram feed which we post really cool
things in the collection every day, five days a week. UM.
And you can follow us at f I T Special
Collections on Instagram. And I am now following you. UM. Excellent. Well,
(38:35):
thank you so so much and we uh hopefully we'll
talk to you next time you have a book out. Thanks.
I would love to most excellent. So that was the
amazing April Callahan. Her books once again, if you want
(38:56):
to check them out, and if you're into fashion history
at all, you do want to check them out. Our
fashion plates one fifty Years of Style and the other
one is Fashion in the Art of Pochoire, the Golden
Age of illustration in Paris. And I am not joking
at all when I talked about how gorgeous these books are.
Like I may sound like I'm overblowing it, I'm not.
They're absolutely spectacular and I am so delighted that April
(39:18):
shared some of her fashion history knowledge with us, Holly
be you also have some listener mail I do. And
since we have just wrapped up the holidays and we recorded,
we kind of frontloaded a lot of episodes going into
the holidays so that you could take some time off,
and I took some time off of recording, but I
was working on scripts and stuff. So, uh, we had
(39:39):
a lot of like really great holiday mail coming to
the office, but we didn't get to shout out out
during the holidays, so I wanted to do a few
of those now. Uh. One of these we mentioned them
last year, this wonderful couple Zach and Paloma, who are delights.
I just I adore these people. They do these really fun,
(39:59):
cute he photoshops for their cards, and this year, Uh,
they have several pictures of them and their cats, but
they have switched the heads on their cats to be
them and vice versa. So it's very funny because they
did a very good job of it. And then there's
one on the back where they have just switched each
other's heads and it's so cute. Uh. And I love
that they include us in their card list because this
(40:20):
is one that I just smiled like crazy when it
came in and then I shared it around the office
Caroline from Stuff Mom Never Told You and I giggled
over this for probably a good ten minutes. Another one
that I wanted to shout out to was um our
listener for Goal from Ireland, who I shared the image
of his wonderful gift that he sent us on social
(40:43):
But in case anybody wasn't looking at that, Fergo sent
us these beautiful mugs from Ireland and it was so nice. Uh.
He lives in the Hill of Terra and County Meath,
which is seat of the former High Kings of Ireland
and home to McGuire's cafe and gift shop, and they really,
in his opinion, deserve a call out if possible. Uh.
(41:03):
So he got us these fabulous mugs to kind of
make mention of them. So we appreciate it. I love it.
I'm using mine frequently here at the office. I really
appreciate it. Fertile, that was so kind to send that
all the way across the pond for us. Uh. We
also got a wonderful uh card and I won't read
the whole thing, and I can't give you the person's
(41:25):
name because they only signed it with their initials and
they didn't put a return address, but it's a beautiful
card featuring two puffins with some lovely Christmas lights. And
this listener talks about how they have historically had a
little bit of a problem listening to people speak extemporaneously,
but how like they're kind of working through it, and
our podcast has been part of that. So I really
(41:46):
appreciate it. I know there could be moments where you
cringe listening to people talk. I do sometimes that's fine,
So I super appreciate it. Thank you so much. The
other shout out that I want to give is another
repeat from last year, but Nicole from Year of the
Calendar dot Com once again sent us gorgeous, fabulous planners,
and as everyone knows, I'm a planner junkie, I am
already so excited for my twenties sixteen planner. Uh. It's
(42:10):
so kind and generous when people send us stuff like this.
I just I really cannot convey enough how much I
appreciate just the fact that someone thinks of us and
wants to share part of their world with us, and
in cases like Nichol's, part of their you know art.
It's fabulous, So thank you so much to everybody I know.
There were other people that sent us great cards uh
and gifts, and we as we always sort of lament.
(42:32):
We don't have time to list or talk about all
of them, but I am so appreciative. It is super awesome.
If you would like to get in touch with us,
you can email us at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also reach us at Facebook
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in history, at picterest dot com, slash miss in history
at miss in history dot tumbler dot com, and on
(42:53):
Instagram at misst in history. But if you would like
to learn a little bit more about today's topic, you
can go to our parents site, how Stuff. We're type
in the words fashion history, and one of the really
cool things that comes up is actually a gallery called
the Changing Tides of Fashion. It kind of looks at
different moments in fashion throughout the years. If you would
like to visit us, you can do that at missed
in history dot com and there you will find a
(43:16):
show notes for all of the episodes since Tracy and
I have been working on the podcast, as well as
all of the archived episodes with all of the hosts
that preceded us, and so once again kind of visit
us at how stuff works dot com and missed in
history dot com for more of this than thousands of
other topics how stuff works dot com