Fibula, 3rd century AD. gold, onyx. 2/ Fibula, beginning of 5th century AD. silver, covered with gold plate, stone inlays, glass, enamel. 3/ Fibula, 5th century AD, gold, inlays: onyx, garnet, amethyst, glass paste
Brooches of this form usually held women’s clothing (Chlamys) together at the shoulders. Fibulae were replaced as clothing fasteners by buttons in the Middle Ages. KHM Vienna
The is the final post by Intermedia Arts MFA student Christine Westrich who spent the the entire Spring 2022 semester mining the primary resources of Special Collections and the American Geographical Society Library as inspirations for creating new fashion designs. It has been a rich and engaging experience. Here are Christine’s culminating observations:
Haute couture never fails to impress on Anna Wintour’s red carpet of the Met Gala. Just a few days ago, the Spring 2022 theme of Gilded Glamour posed a great atelier challenge: to dress in themed opulence or to curb the nines in restraint of today’s pandemic/war/climate calamities?
These styles are orchestrated for their line, shape, and color. While ostentatious, they are cleverly choreographed for the camera. The monochromatic pinks of Valentino and unfussed Tom Ford silhouettes give homage to the sculpturist images of Robert Mapplethorpe who often chided his muse Patti Smith to deconstruct her flair so he could capture a timeless polaroid.
Whether the dress statement of Mayor Eric Adams to end gun violence in the wake of the NYC subway shootings, or Hillary Clinton’s ode to Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, clothing is a means to influence, to power, a means of manipulation as described by John Berger in 1972.
Over this Spring term, I completed sixty fashion drawings under my design moniker “chch”, which arouse just such drama; the dominance and brawn of past civilizations inspired in illustrative gowns for our modern era. From Egyptian gods to Middle Age saints to pre-common-era princes, these designs challenged my thoughts on the exploitation of dress.
Daily, we face the decision of what to wear, considering how we may look walking to Colectivo, sitting on a work stool or looking back to an admirer. These choices reveal our inner playwright and expose us on life’s stage of these non-quarantine days… coquettish, audacious, or perhaps hiding in plain sight.
And should such an extraordinary Met Gala invitation arrive on my doorstep, I would gladly construct one of my sixty costumes to wear and proudly compete in its outsider aesthetic against the pomp of a Milan fashion Maison. Of course, some days it feels best to give up on this visual communication problem of couture, of being under the lights—and in this case—I find my authentic self by joining society via the old-fashioned telephone.
A very special thanks to Senior Lecturer Kathleen Donnelly who provided me with expert costume construction know-how while emphasizing stage awareness and no-nonsense grit, both earned through years of theatre productions.
Thank you to the UWM Head of Special Collections Max Yela for his impeccable fashion taste and to Special Collections Department Manger Alice Ladrick for her kindred conversation on all things Milwaukee.
Thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the creation of fifteen nation-states including Ukraine and Estonia, while 1993 saw the end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia, becoming the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These nations are featured here in my second-to-last fashion plate post with costumes honoring easier days of traditional ethnic dress.
Leo Tolstoy could be argued as the conscience of Russian peasants by his fictional writing in the classic Anna Karenina.Tolstoy was in fact a nobleman and landowner yet he adorned himself in smocks and meager dress, fashioning humility as he wrote of earthly indulgences and subtle sermons on the wickedness of the human condition.
The dress of laborers is also honored in a 1936 Soviet Union publication on a revered textile workerinMiss USSR where a young woman’s 10-hour days and record-breaking statistics on factory looms are lauded as joyful. Her uniform is a black silk blouse and skirt and her profile is documented as “slim” and “little.”
Yet, as with the earliest civilizations there is a place for costume, for adornment that celebrates more than the work of our hands or size of our bodies, whether a farmer’s, a writer’s, or a weaver’s; we yearn for the occasion allowing ornamentation that arouses our senses and inflames our imaginations.
My first fashion plate is titled the USSR Plume Dress, perhaps interpreted by some as a peacock’s egoism; the second plate may be favored by fan-followers of Egon Schiele, while the last crowns brawn and might.
Here is a listing of sources from the UWM Special Collections and the UWM American Geographical Society Library that I have augmented with digital color and outline to emphasize particular details of my inspiration:
1, 8) Wood-engravings by Nikolas Piskariov as featured in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; published in the USSR in 1933 and printed by the Limited Editions Club, respectively titled Anna’s Fall and Head-Piece to Part the Fifth.
2-4) My contemporary designs of the USSR Plume Dress, Estonian Edith Dress, and Czech Crown Dress based on maps from the collection of the UWM American Geographical Society Library that show iconic costumes, respectively titled Russian Empire 1757, published in Augsburg, GE by Augustae Vindel in 1757; Folklore Map of Czechoslovakia, published in Czechoslovakia by the Ministerstvo Informaci in 1948; Parishes of Estonia 2010, published by the AS Regio in 2010.
3) Black and white drawing of Czechoslovakian dress by Belle Northrup in A Short Description of Historic Fashionpublished by Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1925.
5) Photograph of Dusya Vinogradovo a 21-year old woman dubbed Miss USSR: The Story of a Girl Stakhanovite, the Soviet Union’s leader in weaving production and noted to be every young person’s friend as she was “free and happy”; published in New York by International Publishers in 1936.
6, 7) Illustrations by Noel L. Nisbet from the collection of Russian Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, published in London by George G. Harrap & CO in 1916, respectively titled They Came to the Place Where He Had Left Her and His Wife Caressed and Wheedled Him.
The Renaissance period is often synonymous with the greats of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and young Raphael. These master painters poised “imitation” as preeminent beauty, art as poetry—ut pictura poesis—with Michelangelo arguably harnessing the peculiarities of the human spirit most adeptly in his abstract sprawl of figures, elongating their unseen beauty.
A Renaissance essay on Michelangelo by the nineteenth century art critic Walter Horatio Pater investigates the imagination of the master, calling attention to the artist’s wayward loves-at-first-sight and their contradictions with the sculptor’s mantra of la dove io t'amai prima, or,where I loved you before. Pater argues that it is precisely this paradox that comprises harmony: the delight between the sweet and the strange.
Pater repudiated his own time of the Victorian era, acclaiming the decadence of the Renaissance period as the seizing of life, or more aptly in his own words on living:
…to grasp at any exquisite passion… or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or the work of the artist’s hands, or the face one’s friend.
It is in his words that we can embrace the unnatural grace of the late Renaissance, the period adorned with the Mannerist style of bold outlines, objects at-play with nature, and form with fantastical animal-humans. This unique style of the Renaissance is attributed to Michelangelo’s successors who desperately tried to imitate his alien elegance.
Hidden in the figures of Michelangelo are these languid features, satyrs in repose, where solemnity and “faces charged with dreams” dictate, as described by Pater. Darting poetic thoughts give us a glimpse of the bittersweet temperament of Michelangelo’s genius. He wrote of his torments in the pagan frivolities of endless quarrelling and his anger at the Gods for loving him so that he reached an age of eighty-eight years.
In all of his years, Michelangelo claimed his figures to be common, austere persons, yet his hand rendered an inherent surprise and energy that future imitators would exploit in quirky forest gods and lovely monsters.
Ergo, my first fashion plate is titled “DRAGON EWER Dress,” odd, but not as eccentric as the last two designs; perhaps you can trace the growth of the outlandish creature in each iteration.
Here is a listing of sources from the UWM Special Collections which I have augmented with digital color and outline to emphasize particular details of my inspiration:
2-4) My interpretation and contemporary design of the DRAGON EWER Dress, SNAIL CUP Dress and DAVID TANKARD Dress based on Renaissance period vessels between 1540 to 1590 as published in the Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism, published by Rizzoli International, in 1976.
5, 6) French Renaissance plates of frieze borders in Rouen prayer books from 1508; and painted enamel work of Limoges under Italian faience between 1520 and 1540 as published in theDas polychrome Ornament: Hundert Tafeln, by P. Neff in 1880.
7) Walter Pater included an image of Michelangelo’s The Holy Family, or, Doni Madonna, at the Uffizi in Florence, Italy in his aethesticism manifesto, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, published by the Limited Editions Club, Stamperia Valdonega in 1976.
8) Costume of the early sixteenth century often in velvets (red is common) and embellished with fewels, gold, lace, fur and feathers as illustrated by Belle Northrup in A Short Description of Historic Fashionpublished by the Teachers College at in 1925.
10) A drawing or possible woodcut of indentured lions as published in Thomas Wood Stevens’Book of Words: A Pageant of the Italian Renaissance, published by the Alderbrink Press at the Art Institute Chicago in 1909 for the Antiquarian Society.
Decorative Sunday Fashion: The Menagerie of the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages are often viewed as the Dark Ages for want of enlightenment and with the Black Death bookending its perilous time. Yet a closer look shows the most novice scholar that the one-thousand-year period from the 5th century to the 15th century is rich with new kingdoms and hybrid cultures.
The Eastern Mediterranean hosted the Roman Empire in its Byzantine lore, while the conquest of the Umayyad Caliphate marched into Northern Africa and Spain, and Western Europe saw the Vikings land on their shores. Civilizations were blended, skilled trades were shared, and manuscripts such as the Divine Comedyabounded.
The Late Middle Ages saw the quick rise and fall of Joan of Arc whose premonitions from the archangel Michael sent her to King Charles VII of France where she became a confidante, military strategist, and gravely feared by the oppressed English rulers. Burned at the stake for heresy and supernatural powers, it was largely a political move to eradicate her power as royal soothsayer.
The ecclesiastical court that judged Joan of Arc may well have been fashioned with mitres just as Roman Catholic leadership was in her modern-era beatification. Original papal tiaras had three tiers representing the authority of sacred orders; silk and linen versions are adorned today and the opulent gold jewels have been shunned and given as symbols to the poor people of the world.
Just as the papal headgear evolved to suit changing sensibilities of society, so too did robewear. The houppelande was worn by both regal men and women of the Middle Ages, and today it is best seen in black on the shoulders of our Supreme Court. The robes were collared in a variety of forms, standing up, V-neck, or perhaps in most recent memory, in the bejeweled style of the dissent collar.
My first fashion plate is titled “Joan of Arc Dress,” armor and flames in style. The remaining designs are similarly inspired; perhaps you can trace the muse through each iteration.
Here is a listing of sources from the UWM Special Collections which I have augmented with digital color and outline to emphasize particular details of my inspiration:
2). My interpretation and contemporary design of the JOAN OF ARC Dress based on the illustration of Christian dress in the Middle Ages in Adolf Rosenberg’s Geschichte des Kostums published by E. Weyhe in 1923.
3). My interpretation and contemporary design of the MITRE Dress based on common dress worn by Hebrew and Christian ecclesiastics, illustrated by Belle Northrup in A Short Description of Historic Fashion published by the Teachers College of Columbia University in 1925.
4, 6). My interpretation and contemporary design of the HOUPPELANDE Dress based on garments of the Middle Age illustrated by Paul Louis de Giafferri in The History of French Masculine Costume published by Foreign Publications in 1927.
9) German expressionist oil painting by Melanie Kent Steinhardt which evokes a common perception of life in the Middle Ages, in The Life and Art of Melanie Kent Steinhardt, published by Rabbit Hill Press in 2002.
For my fashion inspiration this week, I turned to ancient Pompeii, an urban land that succumbed to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, located on the western coast of Italy, southeast of Naples. The ruins of the city laid buried under ash and earth until 1748 when murals and bodies posed as action figures frozen in time were revealed. While much has been excavatied, today, there are still over 50 acres of land yet to be explored, with growing access to the public as the archeology digexpands.
The allure of Pompeii lies in the catastrophic and immediate deaths of so many who failed to escape, becoming concrete mummies in situ. Recent discoveries in a nearby villa have shown scholars that life in Pompeii was not to be envied, with slavery paramount and social welfare nonexistent.
In spite of the tough Pompeii society, the urban streets were very multi-cultural where theatre was performed in Greek. Street vendors and food stalls provided Roman urbanites with stews of sheep, snail, and fish. Graffiti was found everywhere. Inside one food stall is the mural of a chained dog, with graffiti scrawled on the mural’s painted frame, blaspheming a snack bar owner.
Carnal proclivities were not uncommon in ancient Pompeii. For instance, an excavated fresco of the Spartan queen Leda hints at the everyday homage to the eroticism of mythology. In this story, Leda is seduced and raped by Zeus in swan-form bearing heirs whose power continued the deity tradition of wickedness.
Fortunately, today’s leaders of the Great Pompeii Project are using $137 million of EU funds to reach a vast audience, including Instagram and Twitter followers. Prior to this joint effort, the ruins of Pompeii suffered from environmental overexposure, looting, and Italian red-tape while being nestled in a region of organized crime. In fact, packs of stray Pompeiian dogs are now available for adoption as the archeological site leads modern conservationism efforts by abating tourism blight and corruption traps.
My first fashion plate is titled “Dog Paws Dress,” highlighting the round velvet foot-pads of our furry friends. The remaining designs are similarly inspired; can you spot these single inspirations?
Here is a listing of sources from the UWM Special Collections and the New York Times, which I have augmented with digital color and outline to emphasize particular details of my inspiration:
1, 3, 4, 8). Photographs of ancient Pompeii frescoes and two Roman bodies, published by The New York Times, written by Elisabetta Povoledo, 2018 - 2020. Images 3 an 4 inspired my own designs for the Swan Wrap Dress and the Curly Rooster Dress.
2, 8). My interpretation and contemporary design of the Dog Paws Dress inspired by David Hawcock’s pop-up book, The Pompeii Pop-Up, published by Universe Publishing in 2007.
5) Costume illustration of Roman warriors with animal predator as hooded cloak, in Geschichte des Kostums, published by E. Weyhe in 1923.
6) Woodcut prints by the illustrator Kurt Craemer as published in The Last Days of Pompeii by the Limited Editions Club in 1956.
9) Jewelry of the Roman civilization with several animal motifs in Alexander Speltz’s plate collection, The Coloured Ornament of All Historical Styles, Part I: Antiquity, published by Baumgärtner in 1915.
MFA graduate student Christine Westrich spent the spring 2022 semester conducting an independent study in UWM Special Collections researching historical costume styles as a basis for creating her own contemporary fashion designs. Her diligent work in identifying and reviewing our resources resulted in dozens of original designs, which she blogged about on our Tumblr site every week. Her official study has now concluded, and she made her final post about her work last week.
Christine was a joy to work with, and we are delighted to have had the opportunity to help facilitate and guide her research. Now it is time for actual costumes to be made manifest from her designs, and Christine is beginning that process. Her first dress was made not only from her original design but also from patterned fabric of her design. It was completed, or is near completion under her fashion label, CHCH. The dress is shown here against all the patterns she completed this semester, along with details of the finishes. This CHCH dress bears a likeness to the Egyptian Necklace Dress she designed earlier this semester (also shown here). The main differences are sleeveless rather than fluttering sleeves, center slit rather than side slit, and waist & necktie rather than jewels. Her original fabric pattern is called “Gorgeous,” and its colorful grid pattern required making these modifications.
Christine also conducted a parallel independent study this semester with Senior Lecturer in Costume Design Kathleen Donnelly in the UWM Theatre Department. Also shown here is an embroidered design Christine produced for an apron used in the spring UWM production of Stephen Sondheim‘s musical Into the Woods.
Congratulations Christine on an engaging and productive spring semester!
50 Christophers…all ready to rock and roll in a unique outfit and story…
Every time I write him in a new AU, he is never the same as his previous iterations. He is constantly changing, filling the various roles of protagonist, villain and secondary character. What a happy accident upon this world. What a marvelous, strange and hairy set of occurrences to have led me to him.
Edit: If you’d like to read my commentary on the outfits, you can view the Twitter post here! By the way, I have no idea how that website works and will most likely only be posting this set of images.
Edit II: You know what, you deserve better than being sent to Twitter to read my commentaries. I’ve replaced the transparent PNGs with non transparent PNGs so you can read my commentary with ease.
