Style and Fashion

The Library of Congress produced an exhibit some years ago entitled American Beauties: Drawings from the Golden Age of Illustration.

The Marketing of the American Beauty:

"The unprecedented success of the 'Gibson Girl' in the 1890s unleashed a visual barrage of American beauties which lasted throughout the Golden Age of American Illustration and continues to this very day. The different types of women presented in this exhibition demonstrate not only a nationally evolving ideal of beauty, but also a concentrated effort on the part of publishers, advertisers, and the artists themselves to develop an easily identifiable, aesthetically pleasing product. It is no wonder the marketers increasingly turned to the allure of the American female; in the early part of the twentieth century women were thought to control 80 percent or more of the consumer dollars expended in the United States. Accordingly, advertisers turned to images of feminine mystique to which consumers could aspire (and hopefully emulate) through the purchase of goods and services. Men were also charmed by these images, however, and magazine publishers used the attraction of pretty faces on their covers to boost impulse buying for their all-important newsstand sales."

Exhibition Overview

"Arresting and gorgeous, icons of feminine beauty from America's 'golden age of illustration' (1880-1920s) dazzled viewers with an intensity, vividness and variety that captivate us today. The creation in the 1890s of the 'Gibson Girl' by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) began a decades-long fascination with idealized types of feminine beauty in America. Other gifted illustrators of the era such as Coles Phillips (1880-1927), Wladyslaw Benda (1873-1948), Nell Brinkley (1886-1944), and John Held, Jr., (1888-1958) fashioned diverse portrayals of idealized American womanhood that mirrored changing standards of beauty. More fundamentally, however, this popular art highlighted transformations in women's roles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During what historians call the era of the "new woman," increasing numbers of women pursued higher education, romance, marriage, leisure activities, and a sense of individuality with greater independence. This exhibition features drawings selected from outstanding recent acquisitions and graphic art in the Library's Cabinet of American Illustration and the Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon."

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Regardless of the fashion magazines inclusion of spiky, strapped heels to totter in, perhaps symbolically slowing you down in the race to keep your job (what is that guy wearing again?), the height of heels increases and the word 'ouch' at the very least comes to mind. Here's an abstract from the journal Arthritis Care and Research:

Foot pain: Is current or past shoewear a factor?

Abstract

Objective Foot pain is common, yet few studies have examined the condition in relationship to shoewear. In this cross-sectional study of men and women from the population-based Framingham Study, the association between foot pain and type of shoewear was examined.

Methods

Data were collected on 3,378 members of the Framingham Study who completed the foot examination in 2002-2008. Foot pain (both generalized and at specific locations) was measured by the response to the question On most days, do you have pain, aching or stiffness in either foot? Shoewear was recorded for the present time and 5 past age categories, by the subject's choice of the appropriate shoe from a list. The responses were categorized into 3 groups (good, average, or poor shoes). Sex-specific multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the effect of shoewear (average shoes were the referent group) on generalized and location-specific foot pain, adjusting for age and weight.

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Back in 1997, Alain Sanders, a colleague at Time Magazine, suggested a Notebook item for the magazine on Madeleine Albright's jewelry. Unfortunately, we don't have access to the pins used as illustration for the following paragraphs, but wanted to acknowledge Alain's early noting of her jewelry and their meanings when worn:

BROOCHING THE SUBJECT DIPLOMATICALLY

By Alain L. Sanders Monday, Mar. 24, 1997

"Like haiku or hieroglyphics, diplomatic language often requires interpretation. But the new Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, has taken the semiotics of diplomacy to a new level. She literally wears her feelings on her lapel, but she makes her point subtly, with brooches. "Everyone will just have to read my pins," she says. Below, a selection from the Albright collection, with accompanying interpretation."

"Albright likes to wear the eagle and top hat on her trips abroad as symbols of American power and glory. She most recently wore both when she met Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow in February. The goat is the gift of an admiral at Annapolis, who sent it to her after he read accounts that the brutal Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic had apparently named one of his goats after the then U.N. ambassador. In 1994, when reports circulated in the Iraqi press calling Albright a serpent, she decided to wear the snake pin -- in lieu of a name tag -- when meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Albright says the bumblebee reminds her of Muhammad Ali's motto, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," which could well be her slogan too. Look for the balloon when the Secretary is feeling up, and for the Capitol when she is trying to be at her bipartisan best. Other brooches, like the spider web, she simply finds alluring."

Now the Museum for Arts and Design is displaying a number of her pins as an exhibit, Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection.

"Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection (HLATC). An integral part of the academic program of the School of Human Ecology, the collection features 12,000 textiles and costumes representing countless eras, places, and techniques, making it one of the largest university textile collections in the United States. The size and scope of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, along with its related programs, make it an outstanding resource for scholars, designers, students, and members of the community."

"The main joy in weaving is to watch the article grow under your hands, to plan the colour schemes and the patterns and to watch them develop from row to row, to watch one’s colours combine as a painter watches his pigment form on the canvas the thoughts and the vision of his eye, to watch the pattern develop as an architect watches his building rise story by story." - Helen Louise Allen, in a segment she wrote for WHA Radio. May 21, 1929

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