Finding Futurist Fashion: Lost Links to Haute Couture

Finding Futurist Fashion: Lost Links to Haute Couture2004
Finding Futurist Fashion: Lost Links to Haute Couture Amanda L. Mitchell
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By
School of Theatre
Master of Arts
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The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Amanda L. Mitchell defended on
April 6, 2004.
Colleen Muscha
Committee Member
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee
members.
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2. COSTUMING THE STAGE: FASHION, FUTURISM,
AND THE BALLETS RUSSES 31
3. SCHIAPARELLI LEADS THE WAY 55
CONCLUSION 75
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Umberto Boccioni’s famous caricature of a Futurist Serata 19
1.2 “Thousand and Second Night” fashion fete at the couture house
of Paul Poiret 22
1.3 Paul Poiret and his wife in costume for “Thousand and Second Night” 28
2.1 Wooden puppets for Plastic Ballets, by Depero 34
2.2 Costumes for Depero's Machine of 3000 (1924) 35
2.3 Prampolini's costume sketch for a barman in Cocktail (1927)
and production photos 36
2.4 A sketch of movements for Printing Press and costume rendering by Balla 38
2.5 Balla's sketch for the setting of Feu d'Artifice 44
2.6 Depero's costume renderings for Mimismagia (1916) 45
2.7 Model of Depero's La Chant du Rossignol set 46
2.8 Depero's costume renderings for La Chant du Rossignol 47
2.9 Program cover, star/constellation costume and production photo of Ode 48
2.10 Rendering and for Le Bal 49
2.11 La Chatte production photo (1927) 49
2.12 Costumes for La Chatte 50
2.13 Le Train Bleu costumes by Chanel (1924) 51
3.1 Balla and his daughters posing in Futurist clothing with his “plastic garden” 58
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worn by the artists and Marinetti 59
3.3 Optical illusion sweater/jacket renderings by Balla 62
3.4 Schiaparelli’s trompe l’oeil knit sweaters 63
3.5 Dali’s Lobster Phone and Schiap’s famous Lobster Dress (1937) 64
3.6 Bug buttons and necklace by Schiaparelli 66
3.7 Schiap hat renderings (1937) 67
3.8 Musical note dress by Schiap (1937) 68
3.9 Schiap’s overall for women (1928) 69
3.10 Rendering and prototype of Thayaht’s Tuta 70
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ABSTRACT
This thesis explores the links between early twentieth-century haute couture and the
Italian avant-garde movement, Futurism. Although a definite cause-to-effect relationship
cannot necessarily be assigned, the artistic and aesthetic elements of Futurist fashion and
costume design, coupled with the mode of theatrical presentation used in the Futurist
Serata (Evening), are similar to the ideas inherent in haute couture at the beginning of the
last century. This parallelism calls for a closer examination, as Futurist theories of
performance, costume design, and fashion resonated outside the movement long after its
own demise.
My exploration considers the externally influential contributions and lasting impact
Futurism has made beyond the movement’s own walls. I assess both Futurism’s direct and
indirect interplay with haute couture through the comparison of theatrical elements
inherent in both areas, analyze Futurist and haute couture interaction with theatrical
costume design, and provide a thorough examination of Futurist fashion and its striking
similarities to haute couture designs a mere ten years later.
In the first chapter I analyze the similarities of performance characteristics and
strategies in the Futurist Serata and early twentieth-century fashion show. In the second
chapter I continue to explore the dramatic and performative nature inherent in both
Futurism and haute couture by examining their intersections with theatrical costume
design; the analysis culminates with the specific example of the Ballets Russes. Finally, in
the third chapter I examine the work of one haute couture fashion designer that embodies
many of the chief elements prescribed in several futurist manifestoes. Italian-born Elsa
Schiaparelli, an innovative and provocative designer of the 1930s, provides an excellent
example of the limit-testing and boundary-pushing the Futurists championed within the
realm of performance-wear.
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INTRODUCTION
The history of haute couture (high fashion) is, from its inception, closely aligned
to the history of modern art. Just as nearly every other avenue of artistic expression
bifurcated into conservative and avant-garde movements, modernist aesthetics, which
called for a reexamination of traditional perceptions, dramatically challenged and
transformed fashion in the first decades of the twentieth century. Prior to this period, the
act of designing garments was viewed as artisanal rather than artistic. With the
emergence of modern Aestheticism, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and several other
revolutionary reform movements, however, it was now acceptable for dressmakers to
design and create, rather than just construct. Like musicians and painters, fashion
designers also freely explored their medium and treated it as an artistic expression. As
curator of the 1998 exhibit Addressing the Century: 100 Years of Art & Fashion, Peter
Wollen suggests one variable that explains the early twentieth-century art/fashion
connection is the complex two-way relationship between painting and couture. He
asserts that “dress designers thought in terms of visual tableaux and looked to art for
inspiration, while artists painted portraits of clients who wore the clothes they had
acquired from the couturier,” which means a particular awareness of human anatomy and
aesthetically flattering images is a skill shared by both designer and painter, who, in turn,
inhabit the same visual domain (9). This intriguing intersection of fashion and art, as
well as the re-categorization of fashion as art, was widely explored by haute couture and
avant-garde movements alike. This project explores links between the avant-garde and
fashion, specifically in relation to the modernist movement of Futurism.
The Italian Futurist movement, which was begun in 1909 by poet Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti, flourished for at least ten years with residual activity that lasted
throughout the century. As an historical movement, Futurism is often divided into three
phases of activity. The premier surge lasted until about the end of the First World War,
the second phase until the Second World War, and the final phase of the movement ended
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approximately with Marinetti’s death in 1944. 1 The following discussions in this thesis,
however, focus on the first fifteen years of Futurism. Far from just an artistic movement,
Futurism was both art and a self-conscious ideology; it emphasized a vision of total social
change. Marinetti’s founding manifesto called for the exaltation of speed, action,
violence and conflict; rebellion against the decaying past and staunch morals of the
bourgeoisie; abhorrence of the stagnant Italian culture; and an ardent verve for the
magnificence and illustriousness of industrialization and technological advancement.
Dozen upon dozens of published manifestos and advertisements reemphasized and
propagated each of these ideals directly to a mass public. In fact, in their text Futurism,
Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla provide an analogy that compares the launch and
presentation of Marinetti’s cultural movement to a modern political campaign, which
included the use of “newspapers, saturation advertising, theatres and stadiums, whistle-
stop tours, a stream of propaganda for his members and of abuse for their detractors, a
blaze of publicity whenever a Futurist was lucky enough to be put on trial, and instant
documentation of all these events” (9). Among other avant-garde movements, Futurism
stands out as a movement purposefully campaigned to and among the masses. The
shocking and radical Futurist Serata (evening) not only advertised Futurist ideology, but
it also acted as a mobile gallery that showcased a multiplicity of artistic efforts through
provocative performance. In fact, the Futurists employed performance to disseminate all
of their radical ideas about the collision of art and life. Marinetti best describes and takes
ownership of this reckless collision when he writes, “Thanks to us the time will come
when life will no longer be a simple matter of bread and labour, nor a life of idleness
either, but a work of art” (qtd. in Goldberg 30). 2 Thus, to the Futurists, the world was a
canvas.
Futurists unearthed the potential for art in nearly every aspect of life imaginable.
They left no domain unexplored if it helped to campaign and spread Futurism’s ideals of
a cutting-edge Italian society. Artistic endeavors included painting, sculpture,
photography, architecture, poetry, literature, cinema, music, culinary arts, and clothing
design. Several Futurists worked in more than one discipline, which allowed for artistic
cross-pollination and encouraged experimentation in simultaneous performance
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techniques. They searched constantly for any active interchange between art and life that
could result in dynamic progression and modernist advancement.
Fashion was to prove a particularly rich medium for exploration, as it paralleled
the movement’s mission in a variety of ways. In fact, nowhere else in the movement
does the Futurists’ concept of artistic interplay mix so evidently with their idolatry of
speed, change, and mass consumption. Judith Clark explains this magnetic attraction:
Marinetti looked for echoes of his vision, for sites of inspiration, of what
he described as ‘devine speed’. He found this not only in the trains,
bridges, and tunnels of the new and active cities but also in the great
Parisian fashion houses that due to their fast invention of fashion create
the passion for that which is new and loathing for that which has already
been seen. This had to be harnessed for even faster consumption, and his
fascination with the fashion system itself, as one of infinitely renewed
desire, remained at the centre of the Futurist movement. (10)
In other words, fashion provided the Futurists with an invigorating artistic medium that
advocated for ceaselessly new and progressive exploration. Polemical rhetoric permeates
the scores of Futurist manifestos, which challenge contemporary views of society by
demanding abolition of the forms and values of the past. Futurists fantasized a culture
that continually reassessed and updated itself: one that perpetually sought out faster,
brighter, bigger, and better inventions and discarded the stagnancy of the past. The
continual ebbs and flows of fashion fads already fostered a medium capable of drastic
change to social aesthetics. Each new year and/or season to the next, men and women
followed the aristocratic trendsetters who would deem new fashion faux-pas, literally, at
the drop of a hat; once a particular trend, often popularized by royalty, trickled down to
the merchant class, the style was abandoned or outdone by the next “big thing.”
Similarly, the Futurists’ yearning and constant struggle to “see all of culture changed,”
explains fashion curator Richard Martin, is the “political root” that connects Futurism and
fashion (Cubism 154). The Futurists found an ideal campaign tool to broadcast their
deep-rooted motivation—the dynamic view of the future—by creating and expressing the
movement’s identity through fashion.
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properties. The progression of the Industrial Revolution, which was highly praised by the
Futurists, significantly impacted and altered the manufacturing technique of fashion.
Even though lower costs of production allowed every class of people the luxuries of
style, the very concept of fashion as a means to express luxury and wealth was now
challenged by the ideas of self-expression and individuality. Fashion became a means of
recreating one’s independent identity without such a strong emphasis on social and
economic standing. At the same time more women entered the workforce than ever
before, which added the consideration of practicality in clothing. The middle class
demanded chic, yet inexpensive and sensible clothing options. The Futurists integrated
these by advocating simplification in dress, radical innovation, increasing modernization,
and individual self-expression. This impact resonates today in the widely held notion that
fashion is art; haute couture fashion shows now cater almost exclusively to the designer’s
sense of artistic expression.
The Futurists are often more remembered and noted, however, not for a direct and
lasting impression on everyday clothing needs, but for their work with costumes for the
theatre. There they experimented with geometric and linear shapes, as well as robotic
manipulations and garments of noise and motion. “Mechanization and deformation were
central concerns of Futurist costuming,” explains Michael Kirby, and represent “a
tendency toward the nonhuman and the abstract” (118). Indeed, Futurist theatrical
initiatives explored the mechanization of the performer through scenography, costume,
and the stylization of movement. In response to increasing technology and
industrialization, Futurists complicated the relationship and distinction between man and
machine; they depicted a machine identity in humans and personified locomotives,
stenographs, and typewriters. While other modern theatre practitioners merely theorized
about the man/machine dichotomy, the Futurists actually put it on the stage.
Although a definite cause-to-effect relationship cannot necessarily be assigned,
the artistic and aesthetic elements of Futurist fashion and costume design, coupled with
the mode of theatrical presentation used in the Futurist Serata, are similar to the ideas
inherent in haute couture at the beginning of the last century. This parallelism calls for a
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closer examination, as Futurist theories of performance, costume design, and fashion
resonated outside the movement long after its own demise.
Although scholars have investigated the influence and use of Cubism and
Surrealism among the more experimental designers and fashion houses of the time, the
interplay between fashion and Futurism is widely overlooked. For example, in 1998, the
Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented an exhibition entitled
“Cubism and Fashion,” which explored the direct interrelationship between the two,
specifically Cubism’s compelling artistic force over fashion. Similar exhibitions and
written works have documented fashion’s intersection with expressionism, surrealism,
modernity, and postmodernism. Unfortunately, discussions of this type have consistently
ignored the area of Futurism.
Because Futurists included the area of fashion in their all-encompassing sweep of
revolutionizing artistic endeavors, a well-defined link naturally exists. Interestingly, even
this link within the movement has been neglected by scholars; information regarding the
exploration of fashion and costume is often quickly glossed-over in surveys of Futurism
such as Giovanni Lista’s Futurism, Tisdall and Bozzolla’s Futurism, and Jane Rye’s
Futurism. These chapters or short sections tend to rely on visual data (sketches, designs,
photos) to speak for itself rather than addressing the topic through analysis. A few select
fashion histories also include the Futurists’ effort, but seem to write it off as an eccentric
bout of creativity that never had a direct influence on the rest of the fashion world.
In recent years, however, a small number of scholars have suggested the existence
of such a link, although their focus is confined to theoretical design, sketches, and
prototypes by noted Futurist designers and not necessarily on Futurism’s interplay with
the rest of the industry. I hope to build on these insights and connections. In “Looking
Forward to Historical Futurism,” Clark suggests the existence of a naturally intrinsic
commonality between Futurism and fashion, that “the [Futurist] movement’s powerful
association with the rhetoric of change has underwritten the immediate communicative
power of radical design throughout the twentieth century” (9). Clark’s analysis of the
innovative nature of Futurist fashion, however, stops short of suggesting specific
mainstream designers who latched onto the avant-garde extremes presented in the
Futurists’ work.
Emily Braun surveyed three previously untranslated Futurist fashion manifestoes
in her article “Futurist Fashion: three manifestoes.” Of the documents Braun translated
(“The Antineutral Suit: Futurist Manifesto,” “Futurist Manifesto of Women’s Fashion,”
and “The Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Hat”), she says, “With characteristic
imperialist rhetoric, Futurist writers on fashion saw Italian style as a means of competing
with and exerting political influence on the rest of Western Europe” (35). Certainly the
Futurists’ ever-present sense of nationalism deliberately penetrated all writings
throughout the movement, but in a broader context, their beliefs and ideals of political
and social supremacy translated to an unprecedented concept of individuality for the
clothed self. Braun concludes that the Futurists’ most important contribution to the future
of twentieth-century fashion was that they “were prescient in understanding clothing
design as a legitimate politics of the body and not merely a superfluous decoration
subject to the whims of fashion,” an idea that successfully reemerges two decades later in
haute couture (37). Following Braun’s lead, I will continue the exploration of artistic
identity within the performative action of wearing clothes, especially as it relates to
provocation.
Perhaps the most authoritative work on Futurist fashion is that of Enrico Crispolti,
though his primary publication on the topic has yet to be translated from Italian.
Crispolti’s other English-language articles and essays are quite informative of fashion
activity within the movement and also provide excellent analysis of how and why the
artistic area of fashion fits so well within the movement’s aim. For example, Crispolti’s
essay “The ‘Futurist Reconstruction’ of Fashion,” included in the exhibit collection
Art/Fashion, reiterates fashion’s momentous significance to Futurism through the
function of “ideological proselytizing,” which is, after all, the driving power of the
movement as a whole (44). For the Futurists, the proposed reconstruction or revolution
of fashion became an ideal vehicle that could affect “every aspect of the everyday reality
of environment and communication” (Crispolti, “Futurist Reconstruction” 44). Again,
we see that relevant scholarship tends to focus primarily on the inherent connection
between Futurism and fashion, and in particular, the dynamism that innovatively drives
both fields forward to new and inventive modernizations. Interestingly, Crispolti does
point out that the only known direct collaboration between Futurism and haute couture
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was when Futurist Ernesto Thayaht sketched designs for Madeleine Vionnet’s Parisian
work-studio. Although Thayaht’s work was integrated and professionally produced,
Crispolti notes that it remained “relatively distant from the provocations of the Futurists”
(“Futurist Reconstruction” 51). Indeed, upon examination, it is quite clear that Thayaht’s
Vionnet designs do not thematically or stylistically resemble the work of the other
Futurists. However, consider the reversal: did any haute couture designers engage in
Futurist ideas or themes? Crispolti’s research does not examine nor even acknowledge
the possibility of Futurism’s indirect influence and contribution to mainstream fashion
design.
My exploration, then, will encompass much more than a simple analysis of the
Futurists’ work in this area; I will consider the externally influential contributions and
lasting impact Futurism has made beyond the movement’s own walls. I will assess both
Futurism’s direct and indirect interplay with haute couture through the comparison of
theatrical elements inherent in both areas, analyze Futurist and haute couture interaction
with theatrical costume design, and provide a thorough examination of Futurist fashion
and its striking similarities to haute couture designs a mere ten years later.
The primary evidence that I will use in my analyses includes photographs and
design sketches of both Elsa Schiaparelli’s haute couture fashions and Giacoma Balla’s
Futurist fashions; Fortunato Depero, Enrico Prampolini, and Balla’s costume renderings
for the theatre (sketched and photographed); and several Futurist manifestoes (translated
from Italian). Of the notes and manifestoes, I will use The Founding and Manifesto of
Futurism 1909 (F.T. Marinetti), The Variety Theatre 1913 (Marinetti), Futurist Manifesto
of Men’s Clothing 1913 (Giacomo Balla), The Futurist Synthetic Theatre 1915
(Marinetti, Emilio Settimelli, and Bruno Corra), Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe
1915 (Balla, Fortunato Depero), The Futurist Stage Manifesto 1915 (Enrico Prampolini),
The Futurist Universe 1918 (Balla), Notes on the Theatre (Depero c.1915), Descriptions
of Costumes by Depero (c.1916), The Antineutral Suit: Futurist Manifesto, Futurist
Manifesto of Women’s Fashion, and The Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Hat. In such
documents, F.T. Marinetti, self-proclaimed leader of the movement, and his colleagues
pose ways to “break down the mysterious doors of the impossible” through infuriating
excesses of bombast, primarily and deliberately directed toward the mass audience.
Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla write that “the manifesto form was an ideal
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extension of the publicity machine, and Marinetti’s use of it was an important precedent
for the artists of later movements for whom the theoretical or public statement was an
integral part of the strategy of reaching an audience” and that “the manifestos of Futurism
were intended to provide clear and dynamic proof that the movement was invading every
branch of life, cultural, social and political” (11). Not only do these manifestos provide
detailed descriptions of the Futurists’ utopian fashion visions, they offer an explanation
of how and why artistic endeavors can and should reach a breadth of totality,
encompassing every other facet of…