Caught in the wintertime blues? If you like fashion design there is one way to get rid of them - admiring rare garments covered in delicate floral motifs that have the power to instantly conjure up visions of warm springs.
Fashion fans have the chance to do so at "Fleurs: Botanicals in Dress from the Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection" at the FIDM Museum, in Los Angeles. The event includes 13 rare, historical lavish designs and selected accessories from the 18th century to the 1910s.
"Fleurs" focuses on sartorial techniques that create eternal springtime and flowers that never fade: trompe l'oeil woven petals, shade-embroidered leaves, and three-dimensional silk bouquets. The exhibition also includes a flowered lace roundel made uniting the coats of arms of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. The piece features intricate Tudor roses symbolising England, thistles hinting at Scotland and shamrocks standing for Ireland, plus oak leaves, acorns, and palm and olive branches.
We often see flowers appearing on runways, usually as prints and appliqued motifs, but it's not rare to see monumental gowns that wrap up the models' bodies in petals of luxurious fabrics during Haute Couture shows, while Italian designer Roberto Capucci is well-known for his fantastically colourful gowns that looked like floral sculptures endowed with the power of transforming the wearer into delicate blossoms.
Yet botanical motifs of embroidered foliage, profusions of flowers and realistically rendered roses, peonies, jasmines, daffodils, tulips and carnations have always been popular in fashion, they have indeed been "growing" around the human body for centuries. At times these motifs were replicated in silk, silver, gold or chenille threads, at others clusters of vibrantly coloured flowers were appliqued on dresses.
Patterns of large flowers were for example embroidered in lavish designs worn at court, with threads worked using various types of stitches (filé, frisé, strip and purl to mention a few of them).
Among the botanically-inspired gowns in the "Fleurs" event there is a delicate ivory day dress with romantic embroideries of flowers; a deep yellow American ball gown (circa 1852) with appliqued motifs of flowers framed in green lace; and a Parisian Opera gown from 1887 by Maison A. Félix.
The event also includes an example of "andrienne", a gown in the French style incorporating a loose panel of box-pleated fabric falling from the shoulders to the hem at the back (also known as a Watteau gown, because it can be admired in many paintings by French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau). Flat in front, voluminous at the back, and inflated at the hips, the gown has unnatural proportions that show off as much expensive floral silk fabric (embroidered with metallic threads and trimmed with metallic lace and linen lace) as possible.
The FIDM Museum is in the final weeks of a major fundraising campaign to save 400 years of fashion history by purchasing the Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection, a private collection of around 1,200 historic garments and accessories from four centuries.
Helen Larson spent 50 years assembling it and the collection is in danger of being dispersed forever or absorbed into another private collection, becoming in this way inaccessible to students, researchers, and the general public.
The FIDM Museum is currently raising funds to purchase it: people can make a contribution of any amount online or by mail, or join the #4for400 social media campaign to donate $4 (or more) by texting "Museum" to 243725.
The FIDM Museum has until the end of 2015 to finish raising the necessary funds, and, since Black Friday is coming, rather than spending money on useless gifts, it would be a good idea to splash it on preserving historically significant garments for a museum that will make sure they will become accessible to a vast public. "Fleurs" is also a free-to-the-public exhibition, so giving back something to the museum wouldn't be a bad idea.
"Fleurs: Botanicals in Dress" is at the FIDM Museum, Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, 919 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90015, until 19th December 2015.
Image credits for this post
1. Opera Gown
Designer: Félix, c. 1887
Silk faille, silk machine lace, silk satin, silk chenille, silk flowers & pearls
Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection
FIDM Museum Proposed Acquisition
2. Day Dress
British, 1820s
Embroidered silk areophane
Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection
FIDM Museum Proposed Acquisition
3. Ball Gown
American, c. 1852
Silk taffeta, silk satin, silk floss, silk & metallic lace
Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection
FIDM Museum Proposed Acquisition
4. Court Gown (Robe à la française)
Europe, 1760s
Metallic silk brocade, metallic & linen lace
Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection
FIDM Museum Proposed Acquisition
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