Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising Tiger’s Leap: Fashion Past, Present, Future

Walter Benjamin introduced the notion of the “tiger’s leap” in reference to neoclassicism, or the revival of styles associated with classical Greco-Roman antiquity. Specifically, he called attention to the neoclassicism that emerged during the period of the French Revolution (1789-99). He noted how the culture of the French Revolution “evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes of the past.”[i] Following the overthrow of the monarchy and adoption of proto-democratic values, the political climate of the Revolution and subsequent First French Republic (1792-1804) and Empire (1804-15) was reflected in a revival of Greco-Roman styles in art, decorative art, and fashion.

In the early 1800s, high-waisted gowns made from sheer white cotton skimmed the body in a manner reminiscent of classical marble sculpture. The drapery of classical sculpture seems to exist outside of the perceived whims and vanities of fashion.[ii] While classicism is steady and unchanging, fashion is restless. Yet, preoccupations with the classical can be linked to changing contextual factors. Benjamin’s “tiger’s leap” dates from 1940, when the early horrors of the Second World War were unfolding while the traumatic scars of the First World War were still omnipresent. Revivals of classicism during the interwar period have been linked to a desire for bodily wholeness, unification, and stability.[iii] Draping responds perfectly to this desire by approaching the whole body in the round, unlike tailoring and pattern making which divide the body into parts. Women’s fashions in the 1930s saw a revival of drapery, with designers such as Madame Grès being compared to sculptors. The garments in this section add color back to the marble sculptures whose polychrome paints have faded over time to create historically inaccurate associations between classicism and the color white.

[i] Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Shocken Books, 1969), 261.

[ii] Judith Clark and Adam Phillips, The Vulgar: Fashion Re-Defined (London: Koenig, 2016), 32.

[iii] Alison Bancroft, Fashion and Psychoanalysis: Styling the Self (London: IB Tauris, 2012); Lucy Moyse Ferreira, Danger in the Path of Chic: Violence in Fashion Between the Wars *(London: Bloomsbury, 2021); Paula Alaszkiewicz “The Fragmented Fashion Body: Mannequins and the Paris Exposition Internationale, 1937.” Fashion Studies 5, no. 1 (2024): https://doi.org/10.38055/FS050111.

The corset is one of fashion’s most controversial garments. It is charged with eroticism and is linked to historical practices of controlling and regulating women’s bodies. Various forms of structural undergarments have been worn in Western European women’s fashion since the sixteenth century. At this time, undergarments began to be reinforced with rigid vertical strips or “busks” made from wood, ivory, or whalebone that were intended to support proper posture beneath layers of heavy and cumbersome garments.

Corsetry changed significantly in the nineteenth century. Prevailing gender discourse perpetuated women’s bodies as weak, and therefore in need of the supportive structure of corsetry.[i] In the 1820s, the introduction of metal eyelets allowed for tighter lacing of corsets, leading to reported reductions of three to ten inches from natural waist measurements. However, scholars caution that extreme tight lacing was not a common practice amongst corset wearers.[ii] At the same time, nineteenth-century medical professionals were concerned about the long-term bodily harms caused by corsetry, including pressure on the lungs and deformed ribs. Although awareness of these dangers was growing, there was no socially acceptable alternative to corsetry for women at the time.

The extent to which corsets harmed the body remains the subject of debate. Recently, scholars have advocated for greater consideration of corseted women’s agency in their own sexuality.[iii] However, it is undeniable that corsetry was a tool used to control women’s bodies. This makes the numerous revivals of corsetry since the late twentieth century a fascinating topic. Following Vivienne Westwood’s famous remaking of the corset as outerwear in 1987 and the pink satin Jean Paul Gaultier corset worn by Madonna in 1989, the corset has regularly cycled through fashion and is currently a popular trend. According to British Vogue, the “rib-crunching corset” was reawakened at the 2024 Met Gala—the event considered by most to be the Superbowl of fashion.[iv] While some interpret recent revivals of the corset as an empowered subversion of outdated gender norms, others have questioned if the corset can ever be considered as “feminist.”[v] Can contemporary corsets and corset-inspired fashions be separated from histories of gender oppression?

[i] Valerie Steele and Coleen Gau, “Corset,” in The Berg Companion to Fashion, ed. Valerie Steele (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2010), 166.

[ii] Valerie Steele, “The Corset: Fashion and Eroticism,” Fashion Theory 3, no. 4 (1999), 449 and David Kunzle, “Dress Reform as Antifeminism,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2, no. 4 (Spring 1977): 574.

[iii] Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 5.

[iv] Daniel Rodgers, “The Rib-Crunching Corset Was The True ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Reawoken at the 2024 Met Gala,” British Vogue, May 7, 2024: https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/kim-kardashian-extreme-corset-trend-met-gala-2024.

[v] Alexander Fury, “Can a Corset Be Feminist?,” T: New York Times Style Magazine, November 15, 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/t-magazine/fashion/corset-history-feminism.html

This section juxtaposes two ensembles: a walking suit from the early 1880s and a skirt suit from the 1960s. Despite the decades separating these looks, they share remarkable similarities in the long lines of buttons cascading the length of their bodices and gathered bustles on the back of their skirts. Positioned together, the two mannequins reference the established convention of fashion plates, or the hand-painted engraved prints that were published in early fashion magazines. The framed images on the wall are reproductions of fashion plates from 1822-1883.

By the mid-nineteenth century, most fashion plates were composed of a pair of idealized white women, typically dressed in variations of a similar garment. In addition to showcasing the latest fashionable styles, the prints depicted intimate bonds of friendship and sisterhood. These picturesque scenes were located within private domestic spaces, as well as newly-accessible public spaces, such as parks and cafés. Some fashion plates feature activities like skating and hiking, or holidays at the seaside. Historians credit fashion plates with representing women’s increasing mobility, autonomy, and independence in nineteenth-century cities.[i] Sharon Marcus, a feminist literary scholar, suggests that fashion plates involved a gendered structure of looking in which women consume images of women.[ii] Additionally, fashion plates were primarily made by women. Therefore, they are important examples of imagery of women made by women for women.

[i] Justine de Young, “Representing the Modern Woman: The Fashion Plate Reconsidered (1865-75), in Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914, ed. Temma Balducci and Heather Belnap Jensen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 97-114.

[ii] Sharon Marcus, “Reflections on Victorian Fashion Plates,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 14, no. 3 (2003):12.

From desert boots to cargo pants and camouflage prints, military uniforms have influenced fashion for centuries. In the nineteenth century, near-constant wars between colonizers and Indigenous peoples, the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15), American Civil War (1861-65), Austro-Prussian War (1866) and Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) had notable impacts on women’s fashion. Tailored bodices with military-inspired bouillon fringe and soutache braid embellishments were a way to signal patriotism and solidarity at a time when military service was largely reserved for men. In this sense, military influence in nineteenth-century fashion also saw stylistic cues crossing binary gender lines between menswear and womenswear. The title “avant garde” is therefore doubly appropriate here. In everyday speech, “avant garde” means ground-breaking and innovative, but the term originally referred to the reconnaissance unit, or the “advanced guard,” of the French army that scouted terrain ahead of the main army corps.

The impact of the Second World War (1939-1945) on fashion was significant. Rationing limited the amount of fabric, width of lapels, and numbers of buttons permitted on civilian garments. Moreover, the symmetrical tailoring and “practicality” of military uniforms was readily apparent in the streamlined silhouettes of women’s fashions. Adhering to rationing and adopting wartime silhouettes was a way of demonstrating support on the home front.

The term the “dark ages” casts an unfair shadow over the medieval period (c. 500-1500). Playful scenes of chess, jousting, dancing, and jesters are found throughout medieval images and text. Medieval play encompassed participating in and watching games, sporting contests, music and song, and role play.[i] When make-believe is involved, play is a means of inhabiting an imaginative realm. Play is an intermediary between fantasy and reality.[ii] Interestingly, many of our contemporary ideas of fantasy are rooted in the medieval period. This is evident across popular culture, with titles such as Sleeping Beauty (1959), Lord of the Rings (1954; film adaptation 2001), and Game of Thrones (2011) being exemplary. The medieval period is especially ripe for historical re-imaginings because “narratives of ‘history’ and ‘fantasy’ were intimately connected at the time.”[iii] Comparisons can be drawn to how fashion fantasizes history when it remakes the past as present.

The pieces in this section abound with playful references to medieval garment design and visual culture. The rise of the professional tailor ushered in significant innovation in garment construction, including the invention of the set-in sleeve. Sleeves became the site of creative experimentation; they dangled loosely above the shoulder, as in the case of the herigaut, were elongated into tippets or bliaut, or removed altogether to create a sleeveless overcoat. At times, sleeves were partially covered by shawl-type garments with dramatic dagging, created by cutting bold fringe into the fabric. By the early 1500s, during the transition to the early modern period, sleeves were often slashed to create decorative patterns and fluttering volume while offering a flirtatious glimpse at the undershirt below. Additionally, the visual culture of heraldic coats of arms is evident in the geometric blocks of bold color present in this section. By playfully combining historical references, fashion undoubtedly contributes to the blurring of history and fantasy.

[i] Laura Kendrick, “Games Medievalists Play: How to Make Earnest of Game and Still Enjoy It,” New Literary History 40, no. 1: (2009), 51.

[ii] Lasse Juel Larsen. “Play and Space – Towards a Formal Definition of Play,” International Journal of Play 4, no. 2 (2015): 182.

[iii] The J. Paul Getty Museum, “Fantasy of the Middle Ages,” Google Arts and Culture, 2002: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/VAVxKOU1k18Iqg

“Tailoring” comes from the French tailler, meaning “to cut.” Tailoring is a process of dividing the body into component parts, cutting fabric to fit those parts, assembling them back together, and fitting them on the body with anatomical precision. The profession of tailoring dates to the medieval period when tailors originally made and fitted padded linen undergarments worn under chain mail and armor. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tailors made a variety of outer garments. “Imperfect” and “asymmetrical” bodies were reshaped by stiffened fabrics and the tailor’s skilful hand.

Systems of measurement and approaches to observing the body evolved throughout the history of tailoring. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, printed manuals with illustrations of tools and techniques presented tailoring as a science. The association between tailoring and rational scientific precision stood in contrast to perceptions of women’s constantly changing fashions as illogical and irrational.[i] In this regard, tailoring, like neoclassicism, appears to exist outside of fashion’s supposed whims and frivolity.

While tailoring may appear separate from the cycles of fashion, it is not immune from the tiger’s leap. Throughout his career, the British designer Lee Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) was celebrated for his remarkable tailoring skills. At the age of sixteen, McQueen left school and worked as an apprentice at Anderson & Sheppard and later as a junior cutter at Gieves & Hawkes, both located on the famous London tailoring street Savile Row. When McQueen started designing his own garments in the early 1990s, he demonstrated a mastery of cutting while disrupting the conventional “line” of men’s tailoring. He explained that “a tailored jacket usually narrows around the waist. The shaping for my suits is fitted on the curvature of the spine.”[ii] In 1996, the fashion stylist and editor Isabella Row wrote of McQueen: “he takes ideas from the past and sabotages them with his cut to make them thoroughly new and in the context of today.”[iii]

[i] Alison Matthews David, “Tailoring,” in The Berg Companion to Fashion, ed. Valerie Steele (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2010), 674.

[ii] Lee Alexander McQueen cited in Cristopher Breward, “Su[i]ture: Tailoring and The Fashion Metropolis,” in Alexander McQueen (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2015), 37.

[iii] Isabella Blow quoted in Sarajane Hoare, “God Save McQueen,” Harper’s Bazaar 30 (June 1996): 148, in Caroline Evans, “McQueen, Alexander,” in The Berg Companion to Fashion, ed. Valerie Steele (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2010), 505.

This theme explores the association of lace and gender expression. When lace first developed in the early modern world, it was worn by men and women alike. Yet, for the past two hundred years, lace has been strongly linked with “femininity” in a binary view of gender. Within this period, the meaning of lace has been “twisted” many times.

Lace figures in the “underwear as outerwear” trend that routinely cycles through fashion. So-called “lingerie” dresses were extremely fashionable in the Edwardian period (1901-1910). The name of this style is informed by its materials—white gauzy cotton or linen with lace detailing—which were commonly used in undergarments. Despite the name, the lingerie dress was outerwear. It was worn on summer afternoons for leisure activities, becoming a sign of “respectable” and “appropriate” femininity. Initially, lingerie dresses “represented the unhurried, tidy lifestyle of upper-class women” because the handmade lace was expensive and required careful laundering.[i] Eventually, as the style grew more popular, versions with machine-made lace were available at a variety of prices.

The white lingerie dress as a symbol of “respectable” femininity was used strategically by British suffragettes and American suffragists advocating for women’s right to vote in the early twentieth century. Dressing in white for marches created visual unity amongst disparate bodies. In contrast to the darker colors of masculine dress of the period, white was “a purified and visible marker of difference, conforming to gender binaries of the period, and was thus reassuringly feminine.”[ii] The lingerie dress countered perceptions of the suffrage movement as threatening and radical; associations between white, purity, and femininity were deployed to align the movement with familiarity and safety.

This section leaps from the early years of the 1900s to the 1980s, when the California-based designer Nancy Johnson produced garments with career women in mind. Designers were responding to the increasing number of women in the workforce by offering versions of the “power suit,” which is a men’s garment adapted for women. The power suit followed advice for working women to “dress like men, without being too threatening.”[iii] Nancy Johnson disagreed with this approach, stating that women “do not feel the need to dress according to a standard that businessmen have set.”[iv] Instead, Johnson re-routed romantic and picturesque styles, many adorned with handmade lace, from the tearoom to the boardroom. Once again, the meaning and gendered associations of lace were subject to remaking.

[i] Megan Stevenson, “‘A Charming Consideration’: Edwardian Lingerie Dresses,” Documenting Fashion: A Dress History Blog , June 20, 2017: https://sites.courtauld.ac.uk/documentingfashion/2017/06/20/edwardian-lingerie-dresses/

[ii] Kimberly Wahl, “Purity and Parity: The White Dress of the Suffrage Movement in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” in Colors in Fashion, ed. Jonathan Faiers and Mary Westerman Bulgarella, (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 22.

[iii] Ashawnta Jackson, “The History of the Power Suit for Women,” JSTOR Daily, October 29, 2021: https://daily.jstor.org/the-history-of-the-power-suit-for-women/.

[iv] Paddy Calistro, “New World Entrepreneur Focuses on Nostalgia,” LA Times, June 2, 1989: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-06-02-vw-1278-story.html.

Since 2020, smocked dresses such as Objects 32 have enjoyed steady popularity. The rise of this style has been linked to the “cottagecore” trend, which idealizes rural life. This movement gained traction early in the Covid-19 pandemic when social isolation and self-sufficiency were valued. A New York Times article published on March 10, 2020—as the first pandemic lockdowns were rolling out across the United States —describes cottagecore as an “aspirational form of nostalgia” linked to “modern escapist fantasies.”[i]

Smocking has been associated with picturesque visions of rural life since the late nineteenth century. Now a decorative detail, smocking was originally a means to add stretch to coarse fabrics. This functional feature was primarily used in the protective over-garments, or smock-frocks, worn by rural labouring men in England. The decline of the smock frock started in the mid-nineteenth century when new factory jobs necessitated different uniforms. As a result, smocks became a sign of dated “uncouth male rusticity.”[ii] Yet, by the end of the century, smocks were symbolic of a simpler bygone way of life – a romanticized foil to the alienating and soot-ridden realities of industrialized cities.

The smock’s leap from farm fields to fashion is not straightforward. Supporters of late nineteenth-century dress reform movements, who sought to free the body from the physical constraints and constant change of fashionable dress, appreciated the generous shape and hand-crafted details of the smock-frock. The smock’s introduction to mainstream fashion came in 1914 when the garment was mentioned as gardening wear in American Vogue. The following year, Vogue described how “almost everyone has rushed into smocks and we are told that this summer we shall see them used for every conceivable purpose.”[iii] The cover of Vogue’s July 1915 issue featured an illustration of a fashionable gardener wearing a bright red smock over a blue and white striped skirt (Object 35). The “fashionization” of the smock was impacted by the First World War. Already considered appropriate gardening wear, the smock was worn by members of the women’s land army and women tending to victory gardens. Since then, fashionable smocking with no relation to labor has leaped through fashion many times, including alongside the hippie movement in the 1960s and 1970s and as strapless terry cloth dresses in the early 2000s. What does smocking mean to you?

[i] Isabel Slone, “Escape Into Cottagecore, Claiming Ethos for Our Febrile Moment,” New York Times, March 10, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/style/cottagecore.html.

[ii] Alison Toplis, The Hidden History of the Smock Frock (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 109.

[iii] “Seen in the Shops,” Vogue 45, no. 11 (June 1915): 56 cited in Toplis, The Hidden History of the Smock Frock, 124.

Optical illusions are prevalent in the patterns and textiles in this section. Two of the dresses (Objects 39 and 41) represent op art, an abstract art style based on optical illusions often formed of black and white geometric shapes and patterns. The term “op art’ was coined in Time magazine in 1964. The two dresses with op art patterns also date from the 1960s. One (Object 41) features an additional layer of illusion; it is a paper dress. In 1966, Scott Paper, an American company that manufactured toilet roll and other household products, launched disposable paper dresses. The dresses cost $1.25 each and were available by mail order. The so-called “paper dresses” were made from a non-woven cellulose-based fabric called Dura-Weave. The dresses were incredibly popular; over 500 000 orders were placed in less than a year.[i] Other companies quickly followed suit. These inexpensive garments responded to a growing consumer appetite for constant newness. Since paper dresses ripped easily and did not withstand washing, they were only intended be worn once or twice.

Looking back at fashion history, paper dresses signal a key moment in the development of the fast fashion system. Ultimately, the trend for paper dresses was short-lived. However, their legacy lives on in other non-woven goods, including surgical masks and Tyvek coveralls. Tyvek is used by museums to protect objects from dust, light, and other elements. It is also the material used in the dress in this section from the 1990s (Object 40). While the design echoes the silhouette and monochromatic palette of the 1960s dresses, it replaces the bold op art patterns with embroidered floral sprigs. Like the perpetual rebirth of fashion, these spring buds are ready to burst and blossom into something new.

[i] “Paper Dresses,” Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed September 10, 2024:  https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/paper-dresses?srsltid=AfmBOoox9d1bWpWKc6_urvJyMjmLFgq8Z4rp_OvuHpAqjgJ_ImepuRRj.