100 Dresses - 2

 

   I said yesterday that there is a lot more to 100 Dresses than just a collection of posh frocks. What struck me as I read through it was how the clothes are so much more than 'just' the fashion of their time - their significance is as part of the world of art and design, and as such they can refer to so many other aspects of that world and others. This is no original thought, of course, but as I looked at the beautiful dresses in the book so I couldn't help but notice their connections to other things I'd been reading or looking at.

 

  Take this dress, a robe à l'anglaise, dating from about 1775. The floral design of its damask is attributed to Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690-1763), and her name cropped up in Amanda Vickery's excellent Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England as a rare example (along with Bess of Hardwick, Eleanor Coade and Alice Hepplewhite) of a female designer/architect/interior decorator/furniture maker etc. of the period. Her Spitalfields silk links to Tom McCarthy's novel C in which the main character - whose ancestors were originally Huguenot weavers - grows up on the family's silk-producing and weaving estate, Versoie, and has a cat called Spitalfield. (There's a further connection between the dresses and C to do with Samuel Morse but I won't cover that here).

    On a bit in time, and of course the book shows several dresses designed by Coco Chanel herself - do read Justine Picardie's biography if you are at all interested in that strong, sharp-edged woman - and as Christian Dior figures as you might expect, how about the lovely Paul Gallico novel Flowers for Mrs. Harris, now in a new edition on the back of which - if I remember correctly - Justine is quoted.

    There are photographs by Cecil Beaton in the book, and he appears in Alexandra Harris's Romantic Moderns (there's a Madonna connection, too, but we needn't go into that), as does Mondrian whose modernist grids inspire a dress by Yves Saint Laurent, and finally, to further set in context an evening dress by Jeanne Lanvin, there is a portrait of her by Vuillard, whose paintings are much admired by gallery owner Matthew in The Importance of Being Seven!

    Everything, as they say, is connected.