Paris Special Report: Schiaparelli's Art of Fashion

Schiaparelli's artistic director Daniel Roseberry photographed his new spring/summer 2021 collection in Paris. The gold glasses and bag embellished with eyes, nose and mouth capture the Surrealist sensibility of the fashion house. See short film below. 

Elsa Schiaparelli, Roman aristocrat and iconoclast, was one of the most revolutionary fashion designers of the 20th century. Daniel Roseberry, appointed artistic director of Maison Schiaparelli last year, is the first American to head a Parisian couture house and he has brought a new ethos and dynamism to the storied label. Special report by Jeanne-Marie Cilento 

Gilded nose earrings

and gold fingertips

give Schiaparelli 

a modern Dadaist sensibility. 

AN innovator and iconoclast from the very start of her career as a designer, Elsa Schiaparelli opened her fashion house in Paris in 1927. She may have grown up in a family of Italian aristocrats and intellectuals, amid the luxury of the Corsini Palace in Rome, but she was dynamic and worked hard, presenting four new collections a year that melded art and fashion.

Not only was she the mother of modern sportswear, she designed the first women's power suit, one-piece bathers and experimented exhaustively with new silhouettes, textiles and jewellery. 

There were also raincoats in rubberised wool and silk, jumpsuits with visible, colourful zips, wrap evening dresses, culottes (shocking at the time), reversible gowns and a collection of Surrealist hats (the origin of the term "mad cap"). 

Research into the development of new materials led to revolutionary fabrics such as the glassy, transparent rhodophane, a type of plastic she used for overcoats, and rayon crepe that was like a crinkled, permanent pleat. Hand-knit jumpers with trompe l’oeil motifs depicting bows were immediately in demand, particularly in the United States. 

Schiaparelli's fashion house had become so successful that by1929 she had established ateliers, salons and offices at 4, Rue de la Paix in Paris. Her first collections included swimsuits, beach pyjamas and knitwear in strong contrasting colours with motifs that became well-known, including tortoises, skeletons and sailor tattoos. Her mix of sportswear with the fine workmanship of couture was so innovative that her first licensing agreements were offered by American textile manufacturers. 

Schiaparelli invented modern sportswear and designed the first women's power suit

 Daniel Roseberry

has created a new version 

of Schiaparelli's coat-shirt.

Ahead of her time, Schiaparelli was inspired by men's fashion and created the first coat-shirt in 1935. She was also one of the original designers to create collections around themes for her runway shows. They were a mix of art and pragmatism and she explored ideas relating to many different fields from the circus to astrology. 

She mixed with some of the most avant-garde artists of the day including Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. She used their drawings to create patterns and designs for new gowns and even a compact perfume like a phone dial. 

Cocteau created a drawing he gave to Elsa Schiaparelli that was an optical illusion, two faces in profile that also looked like a vase of pink roses. This inspired the designer to create a blue silk jersey coat. with the sketch embroidered by Lesage on the back, that was part of her Autumn 1937 Haute Couture collection. 

The painter Jean Dunand also created trompe-l’œil pleats on long gowns and sculptor Alberto Giacometti designed jewellery for her. Giacometti created brooches, bracelets and buttons representing mythological, feminine or animal characters. Brooches in the shape of an eye, decorated with a pearl in the form of a tear, were designed by Cocteau for Schiaparelli. During the 1930s she also collaborated with Dali on suits with pockets that looked like drawers, a shoe-shaped hat, the famous lobster-print and skeleton dresses and the Le Roy soleil perfume bottle. Jean Cocteau's drawings continued to feature on coats, evening dresses and Schiaparelli bijoux. 

The designer collaborated with some of the most avant-garde artists of her day including Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau

Gold glasses with blue 

enamel eyes are 

Roseberry's nod to

Schiaparelli's

Surrealist aesthetic.

Other surrealist pieces included leather ankle boots with toes outlined in red stitching, a men’s fragrance bottle in the shape of Magritte's pipe, gloves with red python nails, necklaces encrusted with insects, and handbags with battery-powered decorations. The press articles celebrating Schiaparelli were used to create a newspaper printed fabric that has been copied many times since.  

By 1932, Schiaparelli had eight ateliers with 400 employees in Paris, producing sportswear plus day and evening wear. The following year, the designer opened a store and salons in London and an office in New York. 

The business was expanding so quickly Schiaparelli took over the Hotel de Fontpertuis, at 21 place Vendôme in Paris. It had five floors and housed Schiaparelli's now 700 strong staff. The ground-floor boutique had a wonderful view across to the Vendôme column. 

Her international success grew rapidly and only seven years after she first opened her Paris atelier, she was featured as the first female fashion designer on the cover of Time, the American magazine, in 1934. 

She had also gathered a famous clientele around the world, including Wallis Simpson (Schiaparelli created the trousseau for the future Duchess of Windsor) actresses such as Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo and Lauren Bacall and French aristocrats like Marie-Laure de Noailles plus film costumes for Mae West. 

Schiaparelli launched her first fragrance “S” in 1928 and then released Soucis, Salut and Schiap. By 1937, Schiaparelli had created her famous perfume Shocking which was a great success with its bottle designed by Léonor Fini, shaped like a mannequin with porcelain flowers and a velvet measuring tape. Schiaparelli also created her signature colour Shocking Pink, one she used as a leitmotif throughout her work. 

Seven years after Schiaparelli opened her Paris atelier, she was the first female fashion designer on the cover of Time magazine

Subversive art was integral

to Elsa Schiaparelli's 

collections.

As the Second World War began in 1939, Schiaparelli tried to keep the fashion house going and maintain as many jobs as possible. She started to design more practical clothing suited to wartime life and impending air raids, including jumpsuits with zippers and big pockets, coats with built-in bags and dresses that could be transformed from day to evening wear. 

However, by July 1940, Elsa Schiaparelli had left Paris to give a series of lectures in the United States about clothes and women. It was a successful tour: 36,000 people turned up at one event. She was given the Neiman Marcus Award and was the first European to receive it. 

New York's Museum of Modern Art offered to appoint her as director of its fashion design department, but despite the war raging in Europe, she decided to return to Paris. 

She discovered when she came back, however, that her status as an Italian in France had become dangerous and she left her business to be managed without her from May 1941 to July 1945. Schiaparelli based herself in New York but continued to help France through a wide variety of initiatives. 

When she returned to Paris after the war, Schiaparelli concentrated on selling licenses to the United States, including one for sunglasses in 1952, the first time a designer had done this. Although there were good sales of perfumes, Elsa Schiaparelli felt the world of haute couture had changed. By 1954, following the austerities of World War II, the designer closed both the haute couture and pret-a-porter labels and devoted herself to writing her autobiography Shocking Life. 

It wasn't until Italian businessman, Diego Della Valle, chairman of luxury goods group Tod’s, acquired Schiaparelli in 2006 that the house was reborn. Della Valle even waited another six years for the lease at the designer’s original atelier in central Paris to be free again. By 2012, the couture house had reopened at the Hôtel de Fontpertuis, Place Vendôme, at the very place where Elsa had left it nearly 70 years earlier. 

New York's Museum of Modern Art offered to appoint Schiaparelli as the director of its fashion design department,

Manet and Degas'  figurative

drawings were the inspiration 

for the pattern of this long coat.

Two years later, in 2014, the first Schiaparelli couture runway show since 1954, was presented during Paris Haute Couture week. By 2017, Maison Schiaparelli was awarded the official Haute Couture label by the French Ministry of Industry and the French Couture Federation. 

American designer Daniel Roseberry is the third artistic director to head Schiaparelli since it was relaunched. He says he is inspired by the history of the fashion house, founded on inventiveness and ideas rather than just making beautiful clothes. When he took the reins of Schiaparelli in April 2019, he said it was an "honor and joy to pick up where Madame Schiaparelli left off.” 

He loves the idea of exploring the nature of fashion today, as Elsa Schiaparelli had done in her own era, and believes the Surrealist sensibility is particularly suited to the Covid-19 era we are living through now. 

However, he is working at time that is very different to Elsa Schiaparelli. She established her fashion house between two world wars when the role of women in society was rapidly changing and there were avant-garde art movements that were questioning the way people viewed the world and breaking many of the past century's artistic conventions. Schiaparelli's work addressed the societal changes and integrated the new art around her into her work. 

Today, Daniel Roseberry believes the ethos of Schiaparelli is still about the marriage of art and fashion. Yet he has had to study and ponder the history of Schiaparelli's innovation and creativity and make it part of his own vision. So far in his 18 months at Maison Schiaparelli, he has created both wearable and artistic collections and played with the Surrealist tropes that are so much part of the fashion house's history. Roseberry uses Schiaparelli motifs in different ways for the clothes, accessories and jewellery to link back to the house's origins while creating something new and of its time. 

Today, Daniel Roseberry believes the ethos of Schiaparelli is still about the marriage of art and fashion 

Daniel Robesberry 

photographs model 

Maggie Maurer 

for the SS21 collection.

Will Daniel Roseberry have Elsa Schiaparelli's talent for effecting real world changes in the way women dress or think about fashion? Perhaps it is an impossible task now, in an age inundated by such a plurality of fashion images. 

The original anarchic nature of the Surrealists no longer has any shock value and seems merely fun and zany out of its context and time. Yet Roseberry is keen to experiment not only with the house's well-known emblems but also to bring a radical new sense of design to Schiaparelli.  

The designer worked for a decade at the creative American fashion label Thom Browne in New York, as the head of the men's and women's collections. The unconventional and innovative designs at Thom Browne were probably a good preparation for leading Schiaparelli. Roseberry certainly appears to relate to the sense of fantasy at both fashion brands.

For his new ready-to-wear collection for spring/summer 2021, Roseberry photographed all of the designs himself. Along with most of the other designers on the official schedule at this season's Paris Fashion Week, he did not present a live runway show due to the difficulties of Covid-19 restrictions. Instead, he shot the look book and presented a short film about the collection.

It was not only his first experience shooting a fashion collection but the first time he had ever picked up a camera. He photographed two models around Paris, Maggie Maurer and Rouguy Faye, and at the café La Palette and the Place Vendôme atelier of Schiaparelli. Called Elements of Desire, the new collection combines fluid and stylish designs with some eye-popping Surrealist gems, that draw on the Schiaparelli aesthetic. 

Roseberry is keen to experiment not only with the house's emblems but also to bring his own vision of design to Schiaparelli  

A mould of Maggie Maurer's

face was taken to create

this gilded face piece.

"For this, Schiaparelli's third ready-to-wear collection, I wanted to create something essential. Not basic, with all that word implies, but something elemental: a few key, carefully chosen pieces that express the tenets of our house, that a woman could wear today but also decades into the future,"  explains Roseberry. 

"The shapes are also a canvas for our new, extensive vocabulary of accessories, including an oversized series of Zodiac necklaces, surrealist-inflected finger and toe jewellery, and exaggerated earrings and face pieces that recall some of Elsa Schiaparelli's favorite icons: the padlock, the lobster, and the elephant head."

The face piece is a gilded mould of Maggie Maurer's face and wraps around her jaw and nose like an image from one of Dali's otherworldly, dream-like paintings. Decorative "glasses" are also in gold but have vivid blue enamel eyes creating a distinctly Dadaist upending of normality. 

A pearl necklace is strung with ceramic molar teeth, gilded fingertips look like extraordinarily realistic talons, earrings are in the form of tropical flowers, an eye has crystal tears, a long, gold chain suspends a pleat on a black evening gown, necklaces feature hefty zodiac signs and buttons in the form of nipples adorn tops, dresses and coats. The designs are all striking and compliment the graphic clothes. 

Roseberry has allowed his sense of whimsy to run free with these bijoux and accessory designs and connect back to Schiaparelli as a vanguard of new ideas. The designer has been enthralled by gems since he was child. In this collection he has been able to cast necklaces, earrings, belt buckles and glasses as new emblems of the fashion house while still honoring the Schiaparelli sensibility.  

"I wanted to create something essential, elemental: key pieces that a woman could wear today but also decades into the future"

The new nappa leather

handbags with pleated 

designs & gilded hardware.

New accessories also include Nappa leather handbags with strong silhouettes and pleated details, embellished with padlocks and gold eyes, noses and lips. "Complementing the jewellery is a new and extended line of bags, including updates of our signature Secret and Sun bags," describes Roseberry. 

"As well as two new groups: the first incorporates Schiaparelli's iconic measuring tape motif ~ first seen in the house's 1937 Shocking perfume bottle ~ in a series of totes and pouches. The second is a line of box bags in smooth tobacco-colored Nappa, adorned with surrealist bijoux elements: eyes, noses, and lips."

The clothes in the collection are dramatic but also stylish and functional. A one-shouldered, dark blue dress has a wonderfully puffed sleeve that is a terrific foil to the slim, shape that hugs the body. A fluid pantsuit is enlivened by its vivid colour in Elsa Schiaparelli's shocking pink with a lively print based on female figures by Degas and Manet. 

"I don't need to remind anyone that the past half-year has blurred our collective definition of seasonality. It's also, I believe, made us appreciate all the more the things that endure, that are made with care and time ~ which is, of course, what couture is all about.

"I wanted to bring that same level of care, of detail, and of time to this collection to create the most luxurious (yet effortless) ready-to-wear looks around: the patterns are all hand-drawn, and the embellishments, from buttons to clasps, are all distinctive and considered. 

"I believe this past six months has made us appreciate the things that endure, that are made with care and time"

Shocking pink was 

Elsa Schiaparelli's 

signature hue..

"One thing I particularly love about designing couture is how tactile the process is ~ I wanted to bring that same hands-on sensibility to ready-to-wear as well. I feel so fortunate to have been able to conceive of this collection holistically, from drawing the initial sketches to shooting the images in the lookbook." 

A black, voluminous minidress has wide ruffles and a plunging neckline that is both flattering and comfortable to wear. The collection also has details that will thrill Schiaparelli fans like the Surrealist faces created in broderie anglaise and white shirts with hand-painted breasts. Silk crepe jackets are fastened with Schiaparelli's signature padlock and long, beautifully-cut navy coats have gold nipple brooches that Roseberry has added for a frisson of drama. 

"I concentrated on essential silhouettes in the best fabrics ~ the perfect wide-legged pants in tropical-weight cool wool; a trench coat in a tissue-thin black suede; a slinky, easy evening dress in a high twist wool crepe; playful intarsia twinsets in drapey rayon," Roseberry says. 

"Although these pieces were made with seriousness by me and my team, they themselves are light-hearted, meant to convey a joie de vivre for all who wear them as well as all who see them. This moment we're all sharing will end. But these clothes will last. I hope the Schiaparelli woman who wears them finds as much delight in them as I did in their creation."

Short film in Paris showing Daniel Roseberry creating the new Schiaparelli SS21 Collection

Highlights of the Spring/Summer 2021 Collection shot in Paris

Elie Saab: A New Dawn Amid the Debris

A graceful, flowered dress with voluminous sleeves and a black and white waistband was a highlight of Elie Saab's new SS21 collection, photographed in the rugged hills of Mount Lebanon. See film below.

Elie Saab's designs for Spring/Summer 2021 were shot in the rugged, stony hills of Mount Lebanon for a short film, instead of being shown on a runway at this season's Paris Fashion Week. Although the couturier's atelier and home were badly damaged after an explosion in Beirut, he has created a beautiful, ready-to-wear collection Jeanne-Marie Cilento writes

Fluid, flowing gowns

that drape beautifully

are Saab's signature 

AMID the political and financial crises engulfing Lebanon and the explosion in Beirut earlier this year, fashion designer Elie Saab has tried to bring lightness and beauty to his new Spring 2021 collection. Due to Covid-19, most designers on the official Paris schedule, showed a video presentation instead of having a live runway show. 

The designer's short film shows models gamboling among the flinty hills near his country home in Mount Lebanon. The gossamer gowns and voluminous skirts float in the wind and yet there is also a sense of underlying disquiet. 

Both Elie Saab's home and his atelier in Beirut were damaged by the blast of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse, killing 200 people and injuring thousands more, in August. 

The explosion flattened neighborhoods and businesses already feeling the effects of Covid-19. Lebanon is having a second wave of infections plus escalating political and economic problems.

Even though Elie Saab's headquarters in the city were wrecked, he managed to get the atelier back and up and running within several weeks. He and his team created a couture collection and then the ready-to-wear range. He was also helped by his son and company chief executive officer, Elie Saab Jr. and his wife Christina Mourad. 

The designer wanted the film, created for this Paris Fashion Week in lieu of a catwalk show, to be a celebration of life, showing his lustrous clothes contrasted against the rugged hills. Called Hymne a la Vie (Ode to Life), the collection's sumptuousness was highlighted by Mount Lebanon's arid, mystical landscape that gave a great sense of freedom. 

Elie Saab's film shows models gamboling among the flinty hills of Mount Lebanon, gossamer gowns and voluminous skirts floating in the wind 

A long, flowing broderie anglaise

gown in sunny yellow 

Saab has used brilliant, vibrant colours to enliven the collection including buttery yellow, dark red, magenta pink, turquoise and emerald green. The designs were shown in clusters of different colours. The pinks were inspired by flowers, the rich greens by leaves, and the deep red represents blood and the loss of loved ones. The draped, pale turquoise gowns show the designer's ability to capture the glamour of Hollywood's heyday. 

Fluid evening dresses that drape beautifully on the body, like the one pictured above, are the designer's signature and why he is sought after for red carpet creations or for royal occasions. Kate Middleton wore an Elie Saab gown to Royal Ascot last year. The designer became well known in the United States after he became the first Lebanese designer to dress an Oscar winner, Halle Berry, in 2002. By 2010, Saab was dressing more than a 100 celebrities for different events and continues to be sought after for special occasions.  

One of the standouts of the new ready-to-wear collection is a full-sleeved, flowered dress with a black-and-white waistband that looks both elegant and comfortable (see main picture). A yellow, broderie anglaise gown with flared sleeves and a long, sweeping gathered skirt has the volume and ease of movement that would work equally for a garden party or music festival (see above). 

As a counterpoint to the vivid hues are a series of all-white looks with panels of lace or crochet that looked wonderful against the stony background of the mountains. The designer also wanted to add a note of "peace and serenity" with his white creations. There were also strikingly tailored outfits that had an Eighties glamour, including a white shirt with puff sleeves worn with a black skirt, and wide belt.  

Fluid evening gowns that drape beautifully on the body are Elie Saab's signature 

Sequined black pantsuit

with dramatic pleated sleeves

Another of Elie Saab's designs he likes to include in all of his collections are jumpsuits. This time there were versions in grass green, black embroidered and beaded translucent tulle, white with feathers and salmon-pink  sequins. Long caped sleeves, ruffles and trains added to the sense of drama that Saab gave to the collection. 

The designer also created a range of accessories, including a capsule of handbags with large colourful totes and cross-body designs. There are also large square-rimmed mirror framed sunglasses and gold-leather flats plus wide, flattering belts.   

Elie Saab's main headquarters, offices and workshop are all in Beirut but he also has an atelier in Paris and boutiques around the world, from Mayfair to Manhattan. For the past three years, his couture collections can be found in Paris, London, and his home city, while his ready-to-wear clothes are sold in 160 retailers and his own stores. 

The designer's passion for fashion started early, he was already interested in sewing as an eight-year-old boy, growing up in suburban Beirut. By the time he was seventeen, Saab had already left for Paris to study fashion. But he decided to return to his hometown to open his own fashion label in 1981. He first specialized in bridal couture using rich fabrics decorated with embroidery, lace, gemstones, crystals and pearls. 

By the 1990s, Saab had become the first non-Italian designer to be a member of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, he also showed his first collection outside Lebanon in Rome and started his ready-to-wear line in Milan. In 2006, the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture inducted him as a membre correspondant and he showed his first ready-to-wear collection in Paris for that Spring-Summer season. Today, he has built a large following for his couture and ready-to-wear shows, full of romantic and dramatic gowns, which have become highlights of the official Paris schedule. Let's hope next season, we will be able to see them in person.

Elie Saab's Spring/Summer 2021 Ready-to-Wear Collection Filmed in Lebanon

Photographs of the highlights of Elie Saab's Spring/Summer 2021

Victoria Beckham's Dreamy Seventies Vibe for Spring

Highlights of Victoria Beckham's new Seventies-inspired collection: a silk poplin blouse, and patchwork, flared jeans worn with a chunky, brushed gold necklace. 

From Spice Girl to soigné designer, Victoria Beckham has pursued a fashion career that has been equally lauded and lambasted. Her new Spring/Summer 2021 collection, presented in London, has a dreamy, eclectic look inspired by the 1970s, that hints at the good times beyond the pandemic, Ariana Della Rovere reports

 

Beckham's striking, cut-out dress 

in fluid Jersey.

VICTORIA Beckham had planned to have several small catwalk shows during the day for this season's London Fashion Week. Instead, she decided to present her new collection to small groups of socially distanced guests, as the numbers of Covid-19 cases escalates in the United Kingdom. 

In groups of three, they donned VB facemasks and saw the collection against a backdrop of artworks at the Victoria Miro Gallery, a former furniture factory located between Hoxton and Islington in North London. The designer thought this type of presentation was more suitable to the pandemic and its restrictions. 

For the new season's collection, Beckham ~ who hasn't been wearing the leggings or trackie pants many of us have worn during lockdown ~ had to brainstorm with her team about what to wear when working or lounging around at home.

“Limitations can be liberating," she says. "Working remotely, for this collection we reacted spontaneously. We were instinctive. We asked ourselves what has changed? Who do we want to be? What will we desire?This collection is about freedom - to explore, to dress up, to be yourself."

Instead of putting on anything with an elasticized waist, Beckham maintained her signature, minimalist look at home in vintage denim. And denim features prominently, for the first time, in the new collection. Beckham's jeans have a soft look with wide, flared legs and low waists which she mixed with flowing, silk shirts. Continuing the Seventies theme were long, fluid maxi dresses with lace inserts and bare midriffs.

Instead of wearing anything with an elasticized waist during lockdown, Beckham maintained her signature minimalist look in vintage denim

White wool tuxedo jacket,

Victorian silk blouse,

and split-hem jeans

"Eclectic is a word I keep returning to this season," Beckham explains. "It really encapsulates the [VB] woman, her attitude, her nonchalance. There are different silhouettes, different facets of dressing - coats, fluid dresses, denim and elongated trousers. 

"Hemlines are longer, fits are easier, there’s a fluidity and ease. Really, it’s about a true wardrobe. This collection is rooted in reality - in life, and living. But it’s a dream inspired by reality.” 

Because of the economic constraints of the pandemic of the past months, the label has been downsizing staff and  production costs. 

The 21 pieces in this new collection are less than half the number of last season's, back in February, when there were full-blown runway shows.

The new pieces include long, diaphanous dresses that are always a feature of Beckham's collections, this time in silk and jersey. The designer manages to make her designs wearable but with interesting details. 

"This collection is rooted in reality ~ in life, and living. But it’s a dream inspired by reality.”

Finely-tailored jackets and silk blouses add a note of formality to the jeans and voluminous blouses. Dark denim is contrasted with lighter patchwork and finished in red binding with a slit at the back. The jeans are worn with a long, white tuxedo jacket, voluminous shirt and high, banana-shaped heels (see above). This season's shoes are created from malleable Nappa leather and finished with swags of chains. They add a new note to the Beckham motifs as the designer prefers using flats for shows.  

Summery black lace and lavender

Jersey, evening dress,

Silk slip dresses with key-hole details draw attention to the waist. While the mauve, peach and leopard print gowns had contrasting lace panels, halter-necks or bows at the neck and drew attention to the back, with tie fastenings and crisscross straps. 

Colours were muted in the collection but with bright spots of vivid hues such as brilliant lavender for the summer dresses, emerald green for sharply-tailored trench coats and and orange-taupe for silk, striped blouses. 

Big circular pendants on chunky chain necklaces added to the free and easy Seventies vibe that ran through the entire presentation. 

In the past, at Victoria Beckham’s runway shows, her family has always sat in the front row during London Fashion Week. 

But this time, with Covid-19 altering her plans for a catwalk show, her family were the only guests at the first presentation. Her husband, David Beckham, and three of their four children sat in their own frow. 

Reflecting the aesthetic of the new collection, the family wore black-and-white with a bright dash of colour worn by the designer's daughter Harper, wearing a long, purple dress. Family and work merged for Beckham, as it has for everyone working during the pandemic. 

Highlights from Victoria Beckham's Spring/Summer 2021 collection

Floorlength, leopard-print camisole dress, worn with white Nappa kitten heels with chain detail.

Double-breasted, black wool tuxedo jacket with a white waistcoat and a textured, long skirt in dark navy worn with an ample, brushed gold chain and circular pendant. The red Nappa leather mules are finished with a double swag of chains. 

Liquid, draped dress with a ruched neck in a soft rose hue, that cascades down to banana-heeled shoes bordered by a chunky, silver chain. 

Patch-pocket, trench coat in cotton worn with a tobacco-hued men's style shirt in Jersey Mesh and split hem, straight-leg trousers in lime green.  

Sharply-tailored, belted trench coat in lime green worn with a cotton, silk stripe shirt and straight-leg tobacco-coloured trousers and thin, burgundy leather belt.  

Attractively-draped, long-sleeve cut-out gown in Jersey that draws attention to the current erogenous zone of fashion now ~ the waist.  

Caramel-hued, single breasted fitted blazer in wool gabardine worn with a matching, frilled sleeveless top and split-hem trousers in the same creamy-gold tones. 

 

A fluid and beautifully-draped, high-necked, smocked dress in lightweight, stretch Jersey in a soft beige. 

Landmark Exhibition: Turner's Modern World

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Venice the Bridge of Sighs, exhibited 1840.

Oil on canvas, 68.6cm x 91.4cm. Tate, Turner Bequest

Tate Britain's new landmark exhibition of artist Joseph Mallord William Turner's drawings, watercolours and oil paintings will open next month. The show brings together 160 major works, capturing events of the painter's era, from the impact of technology to the modernisation of society, Antonio Visconti reports 

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Burning 

of the Houses of Parliament, c. 1834-5.
Oil on canvas. 30.2cm x 44.4 cm 
Tate, Turner Bequest 

The exhibition at Tate Britain, called Turner’s Modern World, shows how the United Kingdom's greatest landscape painter found new ways to paint the important events of his time. There are rarely seen drawings and paintings, on loan and from the holdings of the Tate’s Turner Bequest. The artist's works evince his interest in social reform, especially his changing attitudes towards politics, labour and slavery.

Turner's paintings depict humanitarian causes including Greek independence from Ottoman Turkey, the 1832 Reform Act and the abolition movement. The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835) shows his engagement with political events of the day. This was an event which Turner witnessed first-hand in 1834 and painted in a series of watercolour sketches. His A Disaster at Sea (1835) and Wreck of a Transport Ship (c.1801) are ambitious depictions of maritime catastrophes. The artist lived through turbulent times as Britain was at war for most of his life, spanning from 1775 until 1851, and revolutions and battles for independence were happening concurrently around the world.

Turner also witnessed the explosion of capitalism along with new scientific and technological advances such as the change from sail to steam and from manpower to mechanisation. One part of the exhibition focuses on Turner’s way of painting steam and how he developed a visual language for the modern world. His work was avant-garde and startled his contemporaries and his vision today is seen as an unusually perspicacious insight into the rapid change that engulfed the early 19th century.

Turner developed a new visual language for the modern world and his work startled his contemporaries

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 
Rain, Steam and Speed, 

- The Great Western Railway
Exhibited 1844. 
91cm x 121.8cm
© The National Gallery, London

Turner was always interested in the industrial world and in the 1840s he was the only one among his fellow artists that had steam boats and railways as subjects of major pictures. In this exhibition you can see Snow Storm (1842) as well as The Fighting ‘Téméraire’ (1839) and Rain, Steam and Speed (1844) on loan the National Gallery.

During Turner's lifetime, political reform plus the scientific and cultural advances transformed society and shaped a new future for the Western world. Living and working at the peak of the industrial revolution, Turner imbued his work with the changes happening around him whereas many other contemporary artists did not. The exhibition starts in the 1790s when Turner first observed life as a young painter and goes on to explore his fascination for industry as a new part of Britain’s agrarian landscape.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars brought Britain twenty years of conflict with France and living though this time added another dynamic to Turner’s work. The artist grappled with the drama and damage of war in paintings like The Battle of Trafalgar (1806-8) and Field of Waterloo (1818). However, he still liked to paint the Arcadian images of country life and work in Britain throughout his career.

This exhibition displays his recollections of wartime at home and his reflections on the reputations of Nelson, Napoleon and Wellington as well as on ordinary soldiers and civilians. While Turner’s love of mountains and the beauty of nature grew from his regular travel in Britain and overseas. His earliest tours were in England during the 1790s.

It was only in 1819, when he was forty-four, and at the height of his powers as a painter, that he made his first trip to Italy, filling twenty-three sketchbooks with drawings. The city of Venice became a recurring theme of his late work, in oils and watercolours, many of which were made during his stay in 1840.

Turner was the only one among his fellow artists that had steam boats and railways as subjects of major pictures

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 
War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet, 

Exhibited 1842.
Oil on canvas, 
79.4cm x 79.4cm. 
Tate, Turner Bequest

His late style, with its sweeping brushwork, powerful impressionistic effects and modern subject matter, was a revelation to the art world. Even some of his most devoted patrons, such as influential English art critic John Ruskin were bemused. But Ruskin disapproved of his sketches of nudes and was thought to have burned them in a fit of Victorian censorship. However, in 2005 these drawings were discovered to be mostly in the Tate collection, by Turner scholar Ian Warrell.

Today, the Turner Prize, is a top contemporary art award that was set up in 1984 to celebrate new developments in art. The award cited ‘Turner’ in its name because he was controversial in his own day and he had wanted to establish a prize for young artists. The painter is still considered an inspirational artistic figure as he broke with convention to paint the times in which he lived. Many artists ignored the industrial revolution but Turner faced up to these new challenges. And the artist transformed the way he painted to better capture this new world.

Turner first observed the effects of modern life early in his work and the exhibition's different sections follow his fascination for new industry and technology that led to his famous paintings of steam boats and railway engines of the1840s. The Tate exhibition also looks in detail at his engagement with the Napoleonic War and political events of his lifetime, including the 1832 Reform Act and the campaign against slavery. It also brings together for the first time major works by Turner from around the world, including The Fighting Temeraire (1839) and Rain, Steam and Speed (1844).

Dynamic brushwork, powerful impressionistic 
effects and modern subject matter, made Turner's late work a revelation to the art world

Joseph Mallord William Turner
The Fighting Temeraire,1838. 

Oil on canvas. 90.7cm x 121.6cm

© The National Gallery, London

The aim of the exhibition is also to explore what it meant to be a modern artist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In Turner's later years he used oils vigorously to capture plays of light and glimmering colour. This mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (see above) where the objects in the painting are barely recognisable.

The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting but exerted an influence on art in France; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques and Turner is also regarded as a precursor of abstract painting.

The artist's talent and genius were recognised early in his life and the financial independence that brought allowed him to experiment freely with colour, composition and atmosphere. Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature".

But Turner's work did draw criticism from contemporaries, in particular from Sir George Beaumont, a landscape painter and fellow member of the Royal Academy, who described his paintings as 'blots'. Turner's imagination was sparked by shipwrecks, fires and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840).

Already a prodigious talent as a child, Turner  studied at the Royal Academy of Arts when he was fourteen years old, and exhibited his first work there at fifteen

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Shields On the River Tyne, 1823
Watercolour on paper, 
15cm x 21.6cm
Tate, Turner Bequest

Turner was accomplished as a Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. His expressive work shown through his large-scale landscapes and marine paintings demonstrated his skill and unconventional vision and his prolixity.

He worked hard all of his life and was very prolific, leaving 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 works on paper.  By the time he was championed by John Ruskin, he was already very highly regarded by his colleagues at the Royal Academy. 

Born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, to a modest family, he was known as William. His father, also William Turner, was a barber and wig maker and his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. He lived in London for most of his life, keeping his Cockney accent. Although he didn't show off his wealth and success, he was the friend and confidant of aristocrats and kings and stayed as a guest at some of Britain's great houses. 

Turner was already a prodigious talent as a child and studied at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1789, enrolling when he was fourteen years old, and exhibiting his first work there at fifteen. He went on to work as an architectural draftsman and then earned a steady income from commissions and sales of his own work. 

He opened his own gallery in 1804 and despite being very inarticulate, became professor of perspective at the Royal Academy in 1807, where he lectured until 1828. He first travelled to Europe in 1802, returning with the bulging sketchbooks that he would later draw on to create his large-scale oil paintings in his London studio. This wide-ranging exhibition gives a new perspective on Turner's work and shows why his paintings and drawings are as enthralling and emotive today as they were in the early 19th century. 

Turner’s Modern World is organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition runs from the 28th of October 2020 until the 7th of March 2021 at Tate Britain, London.