Historical Dictionary of the Fashion Industry by Francesca Sterlacci & Joanne Arbuckle

Historical Dictionary of the Fashion Industry by Francesca Sterlacci & Joanne Arbuckle

Author:Francesca Sterlacci & Joanne Arbuckle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442239098
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers


M MAGAZINE. See FAIRCHILD PUBLICATIONS.

MME. DEMOREST. Founded by the American Ellen Curtis in 1853, this company was the first commercial pattern company in the United States. Demorest’s patterns were initially only offered in one size for women, men, and children, with no instructions on how to grade up or down. The periodicals Frank Leslie’s Gazette of Fashions and Godey’s Lady’s Book were the first to sell these full-scale patterns in 1854, either through mail order or at retail, as foldout inserts in the magazines. Demorest was the first company to offer its own publication in 1860, Quarterly Mirror of Fashion, and later Demorest’s Monthly Magazine, the precursor to today’s pattern books that feature a wide range of patterns shown on fashion models. Demorest was also the first pattern company to market patterns in envelopes, in 1872. Mme. Demorest closed after Curtis’s retirement in 1887.

See also PETERSEN’S MAGAZINE.

MODEL. A person who is paid to wear a garment or a product for promotional purposes, such as in a showroom, a fashion show, or a photo shoot. The historical origins of formal “showings” of clothing began with the House of Worth in 1858. Wealthy women would be invited to watch as “models” presented a designer’s creations each season. As more designers opened their own haute couture houses, competition increased the need for publicity, which in turn prompted the need for additional fashion models. Model agencies were established to recruit women. In the early days, women were chosen from well-to-do families, as the images portrayed evoked a sophisticated, genteel aura. While the invention of photography occurred in 1839, fashion photography was not fully utilized until the late 1850s, when it was used to document the increasing number of designers’ works and replaced the fashion plate. The invention of the half-tone printing process made it possible to reproduce photographs and sell them to the burgeoning magazine industry, beginning with Harper’s Bazaar (1867) and Vogue (1892). The first successful black model was Dorothea Towles Church (1922–2006), who broke the color barrier in the 1950s by modeling on the runways of Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior in Paris. During the 1950s, models such as Suzy Parker and Dorian Leigh became famous not only for their modeling careers but also for their extravagant lifestyles. In 1966, the modeling profession was turned upside down with the entrance of Twiggy. With her waif-like look, Twiggy opened the door to alternative forms of beauty and paved the way for other models. In the early 1990s, at the height of supermodel mania, models Niki Taylor, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Karen Mulder, Stephanie Seymour, and Tatjana Patiz, and later Kate Moss, Tyra Banks, and Iman, were earning upward of $10,000 per day, with some models asking as much as $25,000 a day.

In 1995, the same designers who had helped catapult these models to fame (Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Gianni Versace, etc.) reacted to their over-inflated prices and overexposure by replacing them with a new crop of less expensive models.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.