Poiret

Koda, Harold, and Andrew Bolton, with contributions by Mary E. Davis, Caroline Evans, Jared Goss, Heather Hess, Caroline Rennolds Milbank, and Kenneth E. Silver, and an introduction by Nancy J. Troy (2007)

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Book of the Year Award (ForeWord) in Art (2007)

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Description

Paul Poiret dominated haute couture in the first decade of the twentieth century. Known in America as the "King of Fashion," he liberated women from constricting undergarments, most significantly from the corset, which had shaped the female form almost without interruption for hundreds of years. In so doing, he revolutionized dressmaking, by shifting its emphasis away form the skills of tailoring to those based on the skills of draping. He advocated dresses that hung from the shoulders, pioneering such styles as the chemise, which he introduced as early as 1911.

Beyond his technical innovations, Poiret established the blueprint of the modern fashion business. He founded a perfume and cosmetics company, as well as a decorative arts company. In forming these enterprises, he became the first designer to relate fashion to interior design and to promote a "total lifestyle."

Known for his marketing acumen, Poiret employed the theater as his runway, dressing such high-profile performers as Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt, Ida Rubenstein, and Isadora Duncan. As an extension of this form of advertising, he threw lavish parties for which he designed many of the costumes. Of there, perhaps the most well-known was his "One Thousand and Second Night," where he promoted two of his most iconic designs: the "lampshade" tunic and the "harem" trousers, or pantaloons, both of which were worn by his wife, Denise.

Poiret's designs reflected the dominant artistic discourses of the early twentieth century, most notably orientalism. An art collector himself, Poiret also worked with a number of important artists, including Raoul Dufy, on designs for fabrics. Two of Poiret's most important collaborations were with the graphic artists Paul Iribe and Georges Lepape, who created deluxe albums for Poiret's elite clients. Many of these pochoir prints are illustrated in this volume and served as inspiration for the remarkable vignettes in the exhibition of Poiret's couture held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007.

Among the garments featured prominently in this catalogue are those created for Denise Poiret. Dark and reed thin, she was the epitome of Poiret's ideal of beauty. He created some of his most daring and radical designs for his wife, who—as many photographs of her reveal—wore them with a captivating, flamboyant self-confidence. In 2005, many of these unique creations were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and formed the core of its exhibition "Poiret: King of Fashion." These exciting acquisitions provide new insights into Poirets artistic vision and help to reassert his position as one of the most important designers of the twentieth century.

Table of contents

Sponsor's Statement

Foreword
Philippe de Montebello

Preface: The Prophet of Simplicity
Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton

Introduction—Poiret's Modernism and the Logic of Fashion
Nancy J. Troy

Denise Poiret: Muse or Mannequin?
Caroline Evans

High Priestesses of Fashion
Caroline Rennolds Milbank

Refashioning the Fashion Plate: Poiret's Clothing in Context
Mary E. Davis

The Lure of Vienna: Poiret and the Wiener Werkstatte
Heather Hess

Paul Poiret and the Decorative Arts
Jared Goss

Forbidden Fruits: The Perfumes of Rosine
Kenneth E. Silver

Catalogue
Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton

Exhibition Checklist
Photograph Credits
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgments

About the authors

Harold Koda is Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is co-author of Chanel (2005) and Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century (2006).

Andrew Bolton is Curator of The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is author of Anglomania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion (2006) and co-author of Chanel (2005) and Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century (2006).

Mary E. Davis is Associate Professor of Music at Case Western University. Her books include Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism (2006) and Erik Satie (2007), a biography.

Caroline Evans is Professor of Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design at the University of the Arts London. She is the author of Fashion at the Edge (2003) and co-author of The London Look (2004) and Hussein Chalayan (2005).

Jared Gross is Associate Curator; Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is co-curator of the exhibition "Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudi to Dalí," held at the Metropolitan (Spring 2007), and a contributor to the catalogue.

Heather Hess is Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University. She was the 2004–5 Pollaire Weissman Art History Fellow at The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Caroline Rennolds Milbank is an independent fashion historian. She has written on Poiret most recently in her book The Couture Accessory (2002) and in the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion (2005).

Kenneth E. Silver is Professor of Modern Art and Chairman of the Department of Art History, New York University. Among other publications, he is the author of Espirit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925 (1989) and Making Paradise: Art, Modernity, and the Myth of the French Riviera (2001).

Nancy J. Troy is Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California. She is the author of The De Stijl Environment (1983), Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France (1991), and Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion (2003).

Press reviews

Culture Kiosque

"Page after page of gloriously theatrical and avant-garde couture ... tastefully bound and presented."

Birmingham Post

" The genius of his [Poiret's] work is shown gloriously in this fine book which is destined to become a collector's item."

Choice Reviews Online

"... exquisite ... Highly recommended."

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