Having looked at fashion archives and vintage covers in the last few days, let’s combine the two things together in this post by looking at a vintage dress and a “vintage” comic hero, or rather heroine.
The dress in question is “The Tigress” evening ensemble, created in 1949 by Gilbert Adrian for his wife Janet Gaynor. The black, beige, and orange silk taffeta chiné and gold lamé dress (from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art) was part of the Autumn/Winter 1949 collection inspired by Adrian’s trip to Africa.
The dramatic wide-hipped silhouette and full skirt with a sculptural draped affect was adapted from 18th century dresses; Adrian had already employed this silhouette for his designs included in the 1938 film Marie Antoinette, directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Norma Shearer.
The comic heroine in question is instead Marvel’s Tigra the Were-Woman. A female version of Marvel's more successful male werewolves, Tigra was actually another character, superpowered Greer Grant Nelson, also known as “The Cat” (1972), who was later transformed (1974) into a were-cat by the humanoid race Cat People and then went on to become a founding member of the West Coast Avengers.
In previous posts dealing with female vampires and mummies, hybridic beings à la Medusa and revengeful women with diabolical superpowers, I have already highlighted how such deviant beings often turned into fetishistic symbols of erotic desire or were employed as metaphors for that perfect combination of attraction and repulsion, so strong competing desires (elements that continuously appear as inspirations for fashion collections, photo shoots and so on).
Like all the above-mentioned creatures,Tigra has a hybridic (erotic and sensual) nature: her body is covered in striped fur, she is endowed with long and pointed teeth, her hands and feet have razor-sharp claws and she has superhuman strength and senses.
A tiger woman (or rather an alien clad in a tiger striped bikini….) somehow reappeared in manga format in Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura (1978-1987), the hilarious tales of Ataru Moroboshi, and the alien princess Lum from the Oni race.
As a further inspiration revolving around the theme of tigers and were-women, I’m going to leave you with a sort of cute "rock animal", hit "Hello Tiger" by (sadly defunct) Glaswegian band Urusei Yatsura.
With many thanks to the Kutmusic Archives for the Marvel comics.
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