Inherent vice, memory, and glass bead disease

March 22, 2015 9:49 AM

Twenty One Dresses for the early Twentieth Century. The New Yorker looks at a recently discovered cache of dresses from Callot Soeurs, a woman-owned French Haute Couture house.
posted by jacquilynne (11 comments total)

Fascinating, thanks for the post. Such beauty and craft. And I know it wasn't made by Callot Soeurs but the shoe! God I want to marry the shoe.
posted by billiebee at 10:13 AM on March 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this. It's pretty far off from what I'd normally read, but it was well-written/evocative and made me interested in seeing more. The first semi-reasonable image source that came to mind was Pinterest.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:15 AM on March 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Wow. I knew Vionnet had worked with them, but had no idea of the Callot sisters' influence on her:

“Without the example of the Callot Soeurs,” Vionnet said, “I would have continued to make Fords. It is because of them that I have been able to make Rolls-Royces.”

Wonderful article!
posted by fraula at 10:15 AM on March 22, 2015

I want more pictures! These are so beautiful, yes, those shoes, and I am not much of a shoe person. They remind me of the fashions on "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries" an Australian show shown on public TV here. Every outfit is an elegant treat.
posted by mermayd at 10:47 AM on March 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Lovely article, I especially like the end bit about the fabric degradation problems.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:37 AM on March 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Very cool. And it's strange that Callot Soeurs has gotten so little attention from fashion historians. Maybe that will change now.
posted by orange swan at 11:40 AM on March 22, 2015

Moar. Dresses!

I am decidedly not a haut couture person--I usually think most of it is ugly. But these are exquisite. Mmmmm, the colors, the design. Moar, please!
posted by BlueHorse at 12:04 PM on March 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I confess to a weakness for fashion plates. I invested in one from a classic ladies journal of the Regency era, which I found by random chance in a rural Yorkshire country fair.
posted by infini at 12:32 PM on March 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love Regency and Georgian fashion plates. They tend to contradict the grandly skirted and jewel toned gowns that feature on the covers of those novels, so it's nice to have a view of what the fashion of the era actually looked like, not what it looks like through the eyes of a modern cover designer.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:27 PM on March 22, 2015

Some other dresses:
Callot Soeurs, evening gown, 1921, France, gift of the Estate of Mrs. Potter Palmer II

A blog post

Pinterest

Not crazy about dresses? An amazing jacket.

An evening cape
posted by readery at 2:19 PM on March 22, 2015 [7 favorites]

That Pinterest board! I weep.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:26 PM on March 22, 2015