The two main pictures in this post show two dresses designed by Belgian painter, architect and interior designer Henry van de Velde and modelled by his wife Maria Sèthe (who was also the maker of the dresses he designed) in their house, Bloemenwerf, in Ukkel, outside Brussels.
Henry van de Velde's velvet gowns could be filed under the Artistic Dress movement: the latter rejected conventional fashion and restrictive elements such as corsets and hoops in favour of arttires that respected the natural shape of the body and that were informed by the inspirations of artistic circles.
The Artistic Dress wasn't that successful, especially in countries with a strong fashion tradition such as France: French designers and artists actually derided the trend, Paul Poiret dismissed the designs deeming them laughable and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec described one of Maria van de Velde's reception dresses designed to entertain guests as a robe or a "dressing gown" fit only for the domestic environment.
Yet there are interesting points to make about van de Velde's designs and about these two gowns in particular: the designer and architect supported the idea of designs that did not "distort" the body and that featured arty and beautiful motifs.
His patterns - that ended up anticipating the Art Nouveau ones - were mainly characterised by an abstract style and by curvilinear lines linked to Belgian symbolism, as shown by the decorative motifs around the shoulder area, the back and the hem of the two dresses in this post.
According to Henry van de Velde, decorations in interior design, but also in fashion and accessories like jewels had to offer people a sort of emotional involvement and had to dialogue with each other, that's the main reason why in the third and fourth images in this post Maria, posing in front of a piano on which we can see a music score by Wagner, is also leaning on a chair designed by her husband for their Bloemenwerf house in 1895 that has a backrest similar in its shape to the motif on the back of her dress; the chair is also linked to the Japanese painting in the background.
While you may share or not the theories behind the Artistic Dress, quite a few of van de Velde's principles regarding fashion were very intriguing: he was indeed among the first ones who stated the time had to come to free fashion from the seasonal obligations French designers had pigeonholed it in; he also believed that the number of pleated and draped motifs that a dress could feature had to be calculated according to the way the wearer moved, which is an interesting concept that connects fashion to mathematics.
In case you want to get more inspired by the arty patterns featured in the two gowns illustrating this piece, in this post you can also find Maria van de Velde's drawings for these decorative motifs, they are taken from Album moderner nach Künstler-Entwerfen ausgeführter Damenkleider (1900).
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