In the last few posts we looked at Californian styles and swimwear. Let's go back to Winter today via a Californian designer who had a connection with Scotland - Bonnie Cashin (1907-2000).
After spending years working in dressmaking establishments owned by her mother, Cashin became a theatre costume designer. Carmel Snow, Harper's Bazaar editor, introduced her to Adler and Adler, where she became head designer.
After returning to California, Cashin was hired as costume designer for Twentieth Century Fox, creating costumes for Laura (1944), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1946). By 1949 she was back to New York City where, three years later, she opened Bonnie Cashin Designs Inc.
Cashin developed a series of iconic styles including the unfitted coat called the "Noh" (designed to be worn over other garments as part of Cashin's layered wardrobe), the poncho, the jumpsuit, the canvas raincoat and the cocktail leather dress. As the years passed, she integrated industrial hardware in her clothes and accessories (see her skirt with dog leash hitches that could be used to alter the length of the garment), these details soon turned into signature features of her designs.
From 1962, Cashin also worked as designer for Coach, where she applied the solid metal fasteners that would become associated with the brand.
In the '60s Cashin started a collaboration with Scottish company Ballantyne of Peebles, so she spent part of each year in Scotland, where she probably met Serbian textile designer and painter Bernat Klein. Cashin used his "ribbon tweed" in some of her garments.
Born in 1922, Klein first attended the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and then moved on to the University of Leeds, England, where he studied textile technology from 1945.
In 1952 he established Colourcraft (Gala) Ltd. that included a weaving centre in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, producing rugs and other items sold at the company's own shop in Edinburgh, and becoming famous for his innovative textiles, that allowed him to build trade with producers such as Marks and Spencer.
His company was renamed Bernat Klein Limited, but a major stake in the business was acquired by a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco, so he resigned from this company in 1966 to set up on his own again.
Klein based himself at his home near Selkirk, designed by architect Peter Womersley to whom he also commissioned a modernist building, a two-storey concrete and glazed studio structure set on brick plinth, with a cantilevered overhanging upper floor.
Klein drew inspiration for his textiles from nature and art (think Pointillist oil paintings) and his signature fabrics included colourful exotic tweeds, incorporating mohair and ribbons, as well as velvet and jersey fabrics.
In the mid-'60s he created a houndstooth mohair tweed made from section-dyed brushed mohair and wool, a combination that allowed to weave highly textured fabrics characterized by a fuzzy, knobbly and irregular surface and by multiple varied colours.
Klein obtained these effects via the technique of section dyeing: this method consisted in dipping sections of a yarn in different dyes to create a yarn of varying colours. Chanel was the first French couturier who bought Klein's fabrics: the French designer used it in her Spring 1963 Haute Couture collection, but the tweeds created by the Galashiels-based designer became more famous during the '60s and also Balenciaga, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell bought them.
Textile fans and people who would like to rediscover Klein can do so now via his archive: consisting of more than 1,800 items ranging from sketches for his designs to finished garments, photographs, catalogues, paintings and tapestries, it was recently acquired by National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The museum has also dedicated a web page to the archive: the site is linked with the recently opened Art, Design and Fashion Galleries and allows to discover very interesting swatches, patterns, tapestries created with Dovecot Studio and designs, including Klein's iconic tweed with a velvet ribbon inside (the trefoil velvet tweed sample from 1965) and the "Aurora" (1965) and "Festival" (1967) textiles.
Colourists will particularly enjoy Klein's hard board with black cardboard front with 140 oval holes for balancing colours in the design of woven textiles and his personal colour guide. The designer thought indeed that too many people wore colours that didn't suit them and, based on the eye colour of the consumer, Klein's Colour Guides helped people choosing the shades that suited them best.
So there seems to be still a lot to learn from the two designers mentioned in today's post and, hopefully, Klein's archive at the National Museum of Scotland will inspire new generations of textile designers and yarn colourists to create innovative combinations of quirky materials in bold and vivid shades.
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