Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme

September 15, 2017 – January 6, 2018

Posts in the Publication category

Fur, Funk, Fame and Fear

Professor Jonathan FaiersJonathan Faiers is Professor of Fashion Thinking at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. U.K. Originally studying fashion design at Central St. Martins, Jonathan worked as a theatre designer and a retail consultant for the Victoria & Albert Museum, as well as exhibiting his video work internationally before embarking on his career as a writer and academic, focussing on the interface between fashion and popular culture. Jonathan’s publications include Tartan, Dressing Dangerously: Dysfunctional Fashion in Film, and essays for Alexander McQueen and London Couture 1923-75. He contributed the essay “Fur: The Final Frontier” to the book, Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme.

Why write about fur and why now?
These are questions I have had to ponder since working on my latest book provisionally titled Fur: A Controversial History (Yale 2020).

A simple answer would be that there is no book in print that tells the complex history of our relationship with fur, a history I was honoured to consider for the book accompanying the remarkable show Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme.

In spite of increasing pressure from anti-fur lobbies (last month’s London Fashion Week attracted unprecedented organised protests), a considerable number of designers are using fur in their collections. Opposing arguments put forward by the fur industry argue that fur is a natural sustainable material offering a real alternative to fast fashion, while some fake fur’s non-degradability and environmentally polluting manufacturing processes have added yet another side to the argument.

Whatever one’s position on wearing fur, its controversial nature has meant that reasoned discussion of its historical, economic, and cultural importance is rare, and it is this lack of serious research that really attracted me to the subject.

For example, it is impossible to research the history, economic development, and socio-cultural transformation of North America and Canada without addressing at least some aspects of the fur industry, and while the Hudson’s Bay Company’s history is well known, we might also consider John Jacob Astor’s millions made from fur, or how significant movie moguls such as Adolph Zukor (the founder of Paramount) invested furry fortunes in order to establish the emerging film industry.

One of the many aspects of fur that I have become especially interested in is its power to transform the wearer, whether that be psychologically, sexually or economically and how these transformations have been imagined in popular culture.

In the track ‘Wrapped In Black Mink’, from the 1978 album Giant by funk supremo Johnny Guitar Watson, the only lyrics, apart from Watson scatting and uttering ‘Come here guitar’, is the phrase ‘Wrapped in black mink’ – whispered some 29 times! This funk masterpiece, which was included in the impeccable vinyl set spun by DJ Dellores @vinylbunnies at the glamorous Expedition opening night party, distills in one simple phrase fur’s sensuous, sartorial power.

Johnny Guitar Watson surrounded by fur-clad fans for the cover of his 1977 album A Real Mother for Ya.

Johnny Guitar Watson surrounded by fur-clad fans for the cover of his 1977 album A Real Mother for Ya.

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Designing Spacesuits

Elizabeth Way bio image-v2Elizabeth (Liz) Way is an assistant curator at The Museum at FIT. She assisted deputy director Patricia Mears, curator of Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme, and wrote an essay titled “Looking Back at the Future: Spacesuits and Space Age Fashion” for the companion book to the exhibition.

Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme is a unique exhibition because it brings together areas of technology that have not previously been studied with fashion. I found one of the most fascinating parts of research for my essay to be in going back to the inspiration for Space Age fashion and exploring spacesuit development. The earliest versions were pressure suits, created during the 1930s for high-flying pilots. As a human travels towards space, air pressure decreases, detrimentally affecting the body. It becomes harder to take in oxygen and eventually liquids, like blood, will start to boil. Pressure suits counteract these possibly fatal effects.

Early pressure suits were modified for the USA’s Mercury missions (1961-1963) and served as an extra layer of protection within the spacecraft. It was only when the Apollo missions (1963-1972) aimed for the moon that “real” spacesuits were invented — suits that serve as the only barrier between an astronaut and the vacuum of space. Although these spacesuits might seem more like equipment than clothing, the Apollo spacesuits were created for NASA by a company called ILC Industries (formerly International Latex Corporation) based in Dover, Delaware. During the 1950s and 1960s, a spinoff branch of ILC was the largest producer of shapewear, or foundation garments, such as bras and girdles, in the United States, selling under a name you may recognize: Playtex!

Seamstresses on the shop floor at the Dover, DE ILC plant, June 28, 1967. Courtesy of ILC Dover, Inc.

Seamstresses on the shop floor at the Dover, DE ILC plant, June 28, 1967. Courtesy of ILC Dover, Inc.

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A Brief History of The Explorer’s Club

Headshot Lacey FlintLacey Flint is The Explorers Club Archivist and Curator of Research Collections. Her support of Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme provided a truly unique partnership between two seemingly disparate institutions. She authored the essay, “The Explorers Club: A Brief History,” in the exhibition book, and here, she shares a bit about The Explorers Club’s incredible collections.

In early June of 2015, I received an email, quite out of the blue, from Patricia Mears. The brief missive served two as an introduction to both Patricia and a project she had tentatively entitled Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme. She inquired about visiting The Explorers Club and discussing the scope of the work and the possibility of our potential collaboration. I remember being a bit skeptical of both The Club’s involvement and my own. I wasn’t entirely sure what relevant resources our Collection could provide a project such as this. And thinking of explorers, past and present, in all of their gear as having influenced runway couture? Not possible. Patricia must have never seen early diving helmets or glacier goggles.

On a personal level, I know next to nothing about fashion (often overwhelmingly evident, but never more so than on any cold winter’s day when I try to convince myself that no one will notice I’m attempting to pass off fleece leggings as stockings) or its history. At the time of Patricia’s email, I was only a little more than a year into my tenure at The Club, after finishing my graduate work in Museum Studies at The University of Leicester. We can all thank my year in UK climes for the fleece legging trick.

However, after meeting with Patricia and discussing the project’s thesis, I was absolutely convinced that, yes, my explorers and their gear had indeed influenced fashion. The winter parkas we all have tucked away in our closets were undeniably inspired by polar and mountaineering treks. And what about moon boots and neoprene dresses? All of it could be traced back to various scientific expeditions. The vision and scope of the project was unchartered territory, much like the work and discoveries of Club Members past and present. I enthusiastically agreed to come on board and provide any resources I could. This brought on the next challenge: I was tasked with detailing the history of exploration.

The interior of The Explorers Club Library which features a ceiling from a fifteenth century Italian monastery. The Explorers Club Research Collections.

The interior of The Explorers Club Library which features a ceiling from a fifteenth century Italian monastery. The Explorers Club Research Collections.

What is exploration but curiosity in action? Humans have always been exploring. Thousands of years of nomadic life, diaspora, conquest, trade route discoveries, colonizing, re-colonizing, mapping – and that’s just scratching the surface of geographic exploration. Add to that technology, ethnology, all branches of field science – the list goes on. My assignment then became narrowing the scope of exploration to something manageable and meaningful. I decided to focus on the history of scientific exploration as told through The Explorers Club’s “Famous Firsts.”

Since its inception, members of The Club have dedicated themselves to our mission, which at its most basic level is to explore land, sea, air, and space. Hallmarks of pioneering 20th century exploration have come to be recognized as The Club’s “Famous Firsts.” Robert Peary, the Club’s third President, and Matthew Henson “discovered” the North Pole in 1909. The discovery of the South Pole by Member Roald Amundsen followed soon after in 1911. Club Members Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to summit Mt. Everest in 1953, and the lowest point on Earth, Mariana Trench, was attained by our Honorary President Don Walsh and Club Fellow Jacques Piccard in 1960. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins reached the moon in 1969 carrying The Explorers Club Flag.
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Polar Explorers and Their Clothes

Pickman headshotSarah Pickman is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University studying the history of science and medicine. She contributed the essay “Dress, Image, and Cultural Encounter in the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration” to the book, Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme.

When you’re a graduate student, one of the questions you’re asked most frequently (besides “What are you going to do with that degree?” and “When are you going to finish?”) is, “How did you get interested in that?” In my case, my interest in polar exploration and clothing started with a single pair of boots.

I’ve always been interested in fashion history. I love browsing vintage clothing sales and thrift stores. About seven years ago, I purchased a pair of mid-century sealskin boots at a vintage fair in New York. They intrigued me because, while I knew little about traditional Inuit clothing at the time, the shape and material of the boots seemed to evoke native Arctic footwear, while the laces, short shaft, and rubber soles pointed to shoes made for a mainstream Western market. The boots were a kind of fashion hybrid. I put them in my closet, planning to wear them when the weather was cold enough.

The author's vintage sealskin boots, c. 1940-1960 Produced for Capitol of Canada by Indian Slipper Co., Ltd., Loretteville, Quebec

The author’s vintage sealskin boots, c. 1940-1960
Produced for Capitol of Canada by Indian Slipper Co., Ltd., Loretteville, Quebec

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Clarifying Facts on Parkas and Puffers

patricia-mears-headshotWritten by: Patricia Mears, deputy director of The Museum at FIT and lead curator of Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme.

This week’s Expedition blog illustrates the challenges that my colleagues, Liz Way and Ariele Elia, and I faced while charting a new topic in fashion history: the influence of expeditions on high style clothing. While there are a growing number of scholarly publications on both subjects, almost nothing exists on their overlapping histories. In addition, many books and articles contain information that is sometimes inaccurate and/or not fully detailed.

It has come to my attention, then, that there are inaccuracies in my essay for the companion book to the exhibition, also titled Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme. I am fortunate that this blog (published well after the submission of the Expedition texts to our publisher last year) gives us an opportunity correct any misinformation.

"Eddie’s down jackets and sleeping bags were so prized by the airmen stationed in Alaska during the World War II Aleutian Campaign that they were wagered in high-stakes poker games. When the U.S. Army Air Forces brass got wind of this, they asked Eddie to design a cold-weather flight suit for them. He built the B-9 Parka and A-8 Flight Pants, the U.S. military’s first down-insulated flight suit." Photograph courtesy of the Eddie Bauer Archives.

“Eddie’s down jackets and sleeping bags were so prized by the airmen stationed in Alaska during the World War II Aleutian Campaign that they were wagered in high-stakes poker games. When the U.S. Army Air Forces brass got wind of this, they asked Eddie to design a cold-weather flight suit for them. He built the B-9 Parka and A-8 Flight Pants, the U.S. military’s first down-insulated flight suit.” Photograph courtesy of the Eddie Bauer Archives.

Our colleague Colin Berg, the Eddie Bauer Brand Historian, has clarified the facts behind Eddie Bauer’s innovative, down-filled jacket. In the book, I document the creation and influence of this now ubiquitous coat, one that in recent years has been seen on the most prestigious high fashion runways. But a number of the details I cited were either incorrect or vague.

I thank Colin for helping me correct these errata.

Colin is the Brand Historian at Eddie Bauer, a position he’s held since 2007. As the historian and brand storyteller, he curates the company archives, conducts tours, and speaks at local museums and historical societies. He has also shared the company’s history at media events in New York and Munich, and will be traveling to Cologne, Germany this fall as part of the opening of an Eddie Bauer shop-in-shop. Colin’s background is as a writer; he has been a professional copywriter for 30 years.

For my essay, I relied primarily on a biography by Robert Spector – The Legend of Eddie Bauer, published in 1994 – as well as a magazine article Spector wrote about Bauer in the early 1990s. Ironically, this first edition of his book had a number of factual inaccuracies that were corrected in a second edition published seventeen years later. Colin notes that although the “inaccuracies do not change the fundamental story,” they “don’t jibe with the facts.”
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1960s Fashion Photography

patricia-mears-headshot

Harper's Bazaar, May 1966, photograph by Bob Richardson / Art Partner.

Harper’s Bazaar, May 1966, photograph by Bob Richardson / Art Partner.

Written by: Patricia Mears, deputy director of The Museum at FIT and curator of Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme.

One of the most compelling components of Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme was fashion photography of the 1960s. My fellow curators, Liz Way and Ariele Elia, and I all found this decade to be the era in which expeditions made a decided impact on high fashion. Not only were designers turning to the Space Age, deep sea diving, and the Arctic for inspiration, so too were fashion editors. We were so taken with the vibrant imagery that we chose John Cowan’s girl on an ice floe as the “poster girl” for our exhibition and book.

The influence of expeditions on 1960s fashion photography was celebrated brilliantly in the pages of leading magazines throughout the decade. This phenomenon is understandable, as the rise of youth styles and the deterioration of established fashion codes allowed photographers to experiment far beyond their studios. Magazine editors occasionally styled models in actual space suits and diving equipment. They also clad their models in outrageous fashions while diving in the ocean or standing on the frozen tundra.

China Machado, Russian Snow Leopard by James Terence Brady of Bonwit Teller, St. Donat, Quebec, June 25, 1962, photograph by Richard Avedon. © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

China Machado, Russian Snow Leopard by James Terence Brady of Bonwit Teller, St. Donat, Quebec, June 25, 1962, photograph by Richard Avedon. © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Harper’s Bazaar, for example, created an editorial spread that was shot in a snowy landscape for the October 1962 issue.¹ Titled “Beautiful Barbarians” and captured by Richard Avedon, the model in the cover image (set on a vertical fold-out), as well as models shot on location and in studios, were swathed in furs such as civet, Mongolian lamb, and even Russian snow leopard. Editorial copy stated that Avedon “calls up the outer steppes of some unimagined frontier — and ambience of fearless, far-out, magnificence. Feathered, furred, leathered, or swathed in silks, his Beautiful Barbarians project is a proud, untamed, magnetism which all women may look to . . .”² The lead model in the spread was China Machado. Of Portuguese and Chinese/Indian descent, her non-western looks enhanced the “exotic” look of the “barbarian” images that, in turn, articulated the period’s racist view that indigenous peoples were less civilized than cultures south of the Arctic, an idea that continued decades after they were first denigrated by early European explorers.

Despite the less-than-enlightened approach of some fashion imagery, dramatic location shoots became a mainstay of Vogue magazine from 1963 to 1971, when Diana Vreeland was its editor-in-chief. Dynamic and highly creative, Vreeland consistently pushed the limits of fashion styling and photography throughout her decades-long career. She was among the first editors to oversee location shoots around the world while an editor at Harper’s Bazaar during World War II. By the time she arrived at Vogue, Vreeland not only expanded the scope of travel to exotic locations, she amped up the glamour quotient and sense of daring.
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