"The greatest designer of them all", this is how Balenciaga described Charles James. An inspiration for many contemporary fashion designers, and famous for draping fabrics directly on the body, James could be considered as the couturier that fashion history forgot.
Maybe not a genius, but one of the genuine "architects" in the history of fashion, James was known for his designs that, though characterised by sculpted fabrics, strategic horsehair paddings, layers of stiffened tulle, crinoline-style boning and abstract and complex shapes produced through experimentation with different textiles, were still quite light, a trick he probably learnt from the early years of his career when he worked as a milliner.
Born in 1906 near London from an upper-class family, James was sent to Chicago to work in the architectural design department of a utilities company after he was expelled from school in the early '20s for a sexual escapade.
He eventually moved on and worked for a local newspaper, but, in 1926, opened a hat shop, followed in 1928 by another shop in New York where he also made dresses.
In 1930 he opened a couture house in London under the name E. Haweis (his father's middle names) James, but went brankrupt and quickly had to start in new premises.
Though he apparead for the first time in Vogue in 1932, his business wasn't too solid and James was struck by another financial crisis in 1934.
From 1937 he started showing his collections first in Paris and then in London, while selling his creations to American stores including Bergdorf Goodman.
Three years later he moved to New York opening Charles James Inc on East 57 Street. For a few years he designed couture for Elizabeth Arden, then opened another house in his own name on Madison Avenue and returned to Paris in 1947.
Many prominent women became James' clients and for them he created dramatic shapes and silhouettes that quite often moved from historical references, gowns that featured complicated understructures, combinations of fabrics of different colours and textures that could give his pieces a special sense of movement and vitality.
His "Butterfly" dress featured for example a tight fitted bodice with an enormous skirt that formed huge tulle wings (twenty five yards of tulle were employed for this design).
James's most famous dress is probably the "Sirene" in which silk was wrapped, draped and gathered round a slender rigid inner sheath, even though the designer himself regarded the "Four-Leaf Clover" gown as the best he ever did.
The dress was originally commissioned to James by Augustine Hearst, wife of William Randolph Hearts Jr, for the Eisenhower Inaugural Ball in 1953.
James didn't complete it in time for the function (being late in completing his orders became in later years one of the main reasons behind James' fall from grace), but the gown turned into an iconic piece for its construction and for being the embodiment of James' fascination with mathematics and geometry. The garment was indeed constructed from thirty pattern pieces, twenty-eight of them cut in duplicate.
The design was based on a reworked lobed hemline from the '30s combined with a quatrefoil millinery model from 1948. The result was a gown made with four layers and an inner taffeta slip, a structured under petticoat, a petticoat flare and an overdress. Interestingly enough, the four lobes are not of equal dimensions, even though they fit within a circle.
A perfect visual summary of James' best pieces is probably offered by the picture known as "The James Encyclopaedia", taken in 1948 by Cecil Beaton who remained James' friend throughout his life. The image shows nine models wearing elegant gowns in pastel colours posing in an ample salon with neutral walls.
An exhibition entitled "Decade of Design" organised at the Brooklyn Museum in 1948 also featured a collection of pieces created by James for Millicent Rogers (an important client for James for whom he designed from the '30s until her death in 1953; Rogers often suggested him fabric, colour and cut of her gowns), but, as the years passed, his star began to wane.
In 1961, three years after he went bankrupt, his marriage ended (he had married in the '50s, though he was known to be gay), and, in 1964, he moved to the Chelsea Hotel where he opened a small studio.
While his reputation fell, illustrator Antonio Lopez became his friend and tried to draw James' best designs.
James died alone at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978; a solo exhibition had paid homage to him in 1975, and this event was followed by a posthumous retrospective held at the Brooklyn Museum in the early '80s.
The most recent event about Charles James was an exhibition at Kent State University in 2007, even though his designs reappeared here and there throughout the years in collective exhibitions.
Named after James’ provisional title for his own autobiography, "Charles James: Beyond Fashion", the Metropolitan Museum exhibition will open in May 2014 and will feature around 100 pieces including ball gowns and iconic designs like the "Four-Leaf Clover", the "Butterfly" and the "Taxi" dress, while the white quilted satin "Swan" down jacket with tubular shapes constructing a muscular exoskeleton around the garment (a design that inspired a few seasons ago also Rick Owens) may have to be requested on loan from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
In the last few years the Costume Institute opted for events that could attract high numbers of people that were dedicated to contemporary fashion designers, brands and trends (Alexander McQueen, Prada and Schiaparelli, and Punk).
This event may mark a return to form and to in-depth research for the museum. Hopefully the exhibition will feature interesting studies on architectural shapes and silhouettes that may also shed new light on Charles James' less known pieces.
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