19 January 1913 “My new Project Redux and 1913 Fashion”

First off I want to start today by saying that when I began to consider my 1913 posts on Friday I was rather excited. The more I thought about it this week, I realized I would rather retain the focus on one year for the whole of the year. My posts may not be daily but will be at least 3-5 a week.

I will not be entirely immersing myself into 1913 as I need my car and the other restrictions would be too great for me at this time. But I shall be trying many recipes, crafts, sewing, cleaning and other notions from the time. The other wonderful part is that many books of this time and earlier are free of copyright so I can find them online and then of course share them with you by putting them in the library, which I am keeping from the Charm of notions page.

The links on the left will pages that will become the storehouse of my various posts. So we can refer to them again based on their topics. I feel this is the best way to move forward for me, as I feel I may continue to do other years each year and this will eventually build up an easy to follow catalog. I wish I had done this in my 1950’s blogs, but we learn from our past, don’t we?

I am excited to look back exactly 100 years ago and see how things have changed or in some ways, maybe stayed the same, who can see. We shall see what we uncover as the year progresses and I hope you wish to come along for the ride.

Well, let’s begin today with something fun: Fashion.

 

The fashionable silhouette given us here on this 1913 Vogue shows the new slimming woman. The cinched in waist is disappearing and a smoother over all look is appearing.

Of course, those ladies in the upper classes would don the latest styles rather quickly, as they were the trendsetters and the main customers of the Fashions houses of Paris, London, and New York.

These are wonderful examples of how the very artful fashion illustrations of that time looked in actual cloth on actual flesh.

The illustrations are romantic and rather decorative in themselves.

Though the corset remained it became much more of an undergarment rather than a body shaper. Here we see there is no need to contort the woman’s shape into wasp-waist thin. In some outfits, bulky appears to be the goal. Rather a saving grace if one were allowed such fashion today. It almost became the decoration of the drape and clothes more so than the woman’s body.

In this fullness, too, we see the dropped waist making various appearances. Another look that we will see full time come 1920’s.

There was perhaps a looking back at the time as well. If we look to 100 years earlier, 1813, we certain similarities. The empire waist for one. On the left we have 1813 on the right 1913.

There is even a similarity in the hair being worn low on the sides but swept up and back away from the head. And the lower forehead being decorated with beads or bandeau. This will eventually lead to the tight fitting cloche hats of the 1920s.

On the left is 1813 on the right the use of feathers in 1913 and the bandeau and hair also 1913 but looking rather Regency. 

However, it would be wrong to thing that all ladies of all classes looked the same then, any more than all of us look like fashion magazines today. The middle classes in 1913 would have added a few changes here and there but overall would have still kept the lower waist and more Gibson Girl hair of the 1900’s.

Here we see some middle class ladies from 1913 who work in an office (a growing work face is burgeoning for our ladies, though the ladies of the lower classes have always worked). Over all their hair and dress is not much changed from five years earlier. Though the lady on the far right is already wearing a narrow skirt and her shirt is not given the forward blouse that was prevalent in the Edwardian period.

And of course the working classes appear not only 5 years out of date but of another century entirely. This photo of a farming family from 1913 could almost be mid Victorian. In fact their clothes almost look like the styles of the 1940’s, but of course there was not even photography yet. This photo is by famous photographer August Sander who was German. This photo and other’s are at the Tate and this link HERE will take you to more of his photos.

Here catalog outfits, ready made, show the more masculine look that sees to be the opposite of the light and free flowing empire waist look of the high fashion house neo-Regency look of this time. In many ways these suits are simply a female version of a man’s walking suite, or sport clothes. Ladies are now becoming more active in many sports once reserved for men.

Though the first World War is often given as the reason for ladies ankles to reappear do to the need for ladies to get around easier to work in munitions and the field, we see that fashion was toying with the idea already.  Though, again, middle class women, particularly older ladies, would most likely have kept their skirts to the floor until after WWI begins.Yet, these shorter ankle bearing clothes were most likely part of the ‘hobble skirt’ which showed more leg but restricted one’s ability to get about. The last gasp of pre World War attempts to show ladies of upper classes hadn’t need to move about too much. Something that forever changed after the War years.

Though I will not be wearing clothes and undergarments of the period as I did in my 1950’s projects, I would like to at least sew up a few skirts or dresses from this year. So, I shall see what I can find for patterns and maybe get my hand on an old treadle sewing machine, just for the fun of it.

I hope all who still read me will be glad that I am returning to the format of focusing on one year. I really feel it will be more interesting and fun overall.

Have a lovely day.

11 January 1913 : The 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art

When deciding on my approach to this years blog, I toyed with various ideas for intensive study of one particular year. 1913 presented itself for obvious reasons, it being 100 years from this year.

But, as many of you know as well as being a homemaker, I am now also working part time outside the home as well as beginning to return to school  Therefore an entirely immersed year was simply out of the question for me this year. And so simply sharing what interest me in little poignant vignettes seemed the best solution to allow me to continue to post daily.

This week I began to think how nice it would be to at least touch upon 1913 and so was born the idea of Friday’s being “A Day in 1913”. This way I can have a weekly post about that time and still feel I am considering it while in the year 2013. One likes to draw parallels and this seems the best time to do so.

I will post these hare on my new blog but will also link a secondary blog as a sort of home for just the 1913 posts. That way they can live happily together and by the years end I shall have roughly 48 posts addressing the year 1913. We can look at fashion, the home, domestic science, art, politics, architecture. You name it, we shall look at it. I hope this will be of interest to you.

Today I thought we could look at the beginning of Modern Art, which in some ways really became a sort of official happening in 1913 with the International Exhibition of Modern Art held at  New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets, from February 17 until March 15.

The Armory Show was the first exhibition mounted by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and was run by their president, Arthur B. Davies secretary Walt Kuhn  and Walter Pach  It displayed some 1,300 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 avant-garde European and American artists. Impressionist Fauvist and Cubist works were represented.

The show shocked many and there were cries of indecency and immorality. Former President Theodore Roosevelt cried, “It’s not art!”.

The most controversial work was Cubist work “A Nude Descending a Staircase”, by Marcel Duchamp. This lead to many bad reviews and some rather funny cartoons of this new movement. Though  Duchamp went on to sell three works at the show and continued to affect many up and coming artists.

Here is a funny cartoon about a cubist man in his cubist house done by famous cartoonist John French Sloan.

The affects of the show upon the art world and artists can be demonstrated here in this 1914 work by Man Ray which used the classical European painting of bathers and Old Master nudes as a starting off point to describe the figure in the modern vernacular. Man Ray, as many know, would go on to use photography as his medium in his surrealist works. What is interesting in this work is though the figure and landscape are broken into very basic shapes, not only are the figures still discernable but the triangular pyramid often used as a sort of template for Old Master painters is still relevant. So, there is still an element of playing off a traditional or studied background.

Here we see Man Ray taking a tongue and cheek approach to an old Master work, Ingres “the Bather”. Yet, in its approach we are still expected to be familiar with Arts History. Today, Modern art has become beyond Art for Art’s sake and rather more, Anything goes for any reason, usually no reason at all. The works that referenced classics and using ones intellect seems to be replaced with simply representations of ad-work or glorified commercials or graffiti. But, I digress. The point being that 1913 will most likely show the true break of the Past into the Modern in many things,  not just Art.

Now, I include this work by Stuart Davis, one of the artists at the exhibition, not because it seems shocking or specifically ‘modern’ but to give a bit of Fashion History. Here we can already see the lowered waist and even the lowered wearing of a hat in a cloche like manner, though the larger brim is still popular as well.

For anyone who is interested I found the catalog available online. It has very little images, but does list all the artists and is of an interest to look at, I think. If any of you wish to see and maybe study some of the unknown artists work at the time. The link can be found HERE.

I hope all have a lovely day.