INFLUENTIAL IMAGE

I recently attended a wonderful online class with the V&A Academy - ‘Chanel to Westwood - Fashion Innovators of the 20th Century’. It’s been amazing, as all the V&A programmes are. High quality speakers, with wonderful insights, adding to my ever increasing passion and knowledge of the vast and, often complex, subject that is fashion.

The content brought back memories of when I visited the V&A Museum in London to see both the Christian Dior and Mary Quant exhibitions. Although they are very different, the two designers had something in common. Both created using external influences as their inspirations.

Dior loved nature, especially beautiful gardens. He claimed that he’d created flower-women with ’soft shoulders, fine waists like liana and wide skirts like corolla’. This makes sense if you have ever visited Les Rhumbs, the Normandy based, pink and white gabled Edwardian house where he was born and, within which, Dior’s beloved mother Madeleine created a rose-trellised haven. It’s also no surprise that Miss Dior, his first perfume launched in 1947 and named for his sister Catherine, is packed with floral notes – gardenias, irises, jasmines, roses, and lilies of the valley. Flowers, in pastel colours, that would have surrounded him in his youth. Think of a Monet painting. No harshness. Just harmony on a canvas. Dior captured this in his designs. His love of beauty, the precision of his tailoring, and the exaggerated hourglass silhouette are typical of a connoisseur, who desires quality, refinement, elegance, fit and fabric in his attire. This ethos has pretty much guided the House of Dior ever since.

A child of the late 50’s, I just missed out on the Swinging Sixties and all that Great Britain had to offer. The mini skirt, Carnaby Street, the Beatles and it’s innovations in music generally, made it the IN place to be. So, I hadn’t realised just how pioneering Mary Quant was in changing the landscape of fashion and beauty. Her yardstick was Levi jeans. For her, they were the ultimate in functionality and enduring quality but also sexiness and magnetic appeal for the wearer. Everything she designed had to fit within this criterium. When you see her clothes, it’s obvious that they have a ‘sporty’ feel which was so different to what had gone before. Most of the dresses were designed to pull on over your head. No fiddly buttons in sight. They were short, so the wearer could move at speed, with freedom. The colours were fun and bright, for the most part. She made make up cool. Huge panda eyes and pale lips, immortalised by the famous model of the day Twiggy, changed the cosmetics landscape. Her beauty products were sold by young, fun assistants wearing casual clothes not the ‘stuffy’ elegant, slightly scary assistants of old. I recognised instantly, that if I had been a teenager at that time, I would have been a MQ girl. Quick, easy but ‘look at me’ is my kind of style.

Chanel was also a designer that had favoured a simple, but at the same time extremely elegant, approach. She revolutionised the way women dressed by using fabrics and garments that were often in the male domain. Her infamous Breton sweater, pretty much seen on everyone today including our own Princess of Wales, was worn by fisherman. Silk jersey was traditionally used for underwear before she began fashioning into shirts and dresses. Because of Chanel, women had the choice to ditch the corsets, play sports, swim - though the costumes were made of wool so not exactly practical when wet! She introduced ‘pants’, or trousers as we call them, when this was unheard of for a woman. Remember, this was at the beginning of the 20th century. Yet, it was not until the mid 1990’s that I was allowed to wear a trouser suit for work! Chanel was not happy about Dior creating his New Look requiring the tiniest of women’s waists with the requisite corsetry to provide the hourglass figure. It was this reason that she came out of retirement at the age of 70.

Yves Saint Laurent often channelled the masculine attire in his creations for women. I think we all must be aware the ‘Le Smoking’ - the proverbial black tie suit worn by women. He also designed safari suits, and trench coats.

Most creators (artists, cooks, sculptors, musicians, fashion designers etc.) source material is often inspired by external influences; Vivienne Westwood’s designs are based on intellectual research into the historical. Like Chanel, she also preferred using traditional fabrics such as Scottish tweed. This is also very much the case for John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen. Valentino’s own particular shade of red was inspired by the cathedrals of Barcelona.

Here’s the thing: we too can be truthfully creative in our styling. If out clothing tells the world what we want them to know about us - it makes sense to utilise it.

What are your influences?

Person/actor/singer/celebrity

Favorite place/holiday/food/thing/time

Perfect pleasure/hobby/passion/lifestyle

Colour/shape/texture/smell

Artwork/design/jewellery/building/nature/historical period

Book/film/play/ballet/painting

Think about what you really love. Can it somehow play a part in how you choose to dress?

If you use your clothes to tell your story, why not use other parts of your life to help create it?

Have fun.