Costumes Parisiens, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

 

Costumes Parisiens

 

fashion plates from 1912-1914

 

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Chester Beatty Library

 

1 October 2013 to 30 March 2014

 

One of my favourite museums, the Chester Beatty Library, is hosting an exhibition of 150 plates from the fashion magazine  Journal des Dames et des Modes (1912-1914). You can read more about it here.

 

They are hosting a series of talk on fashion throughout the exhibition, full details here

 "One hundred years after the publication of the fashion magazine Journal des Dames et des Modes (1912-1914), the Chester Beatty Library is delighted to open an exhibition featuring almost 150 of the Journal’s unique fashion illustrations, known as Costumes Parisiens. In 1912, while the first plates were under production, Chester Beatty was negotiating the purchase and renovation of Baroda House, London. The following spring, Beatty set sail for England, accompanied by his children and soon to be second wife, Edith Dunn Stone. New York society acclaimed Edith as one of the ten most beautiful women in America. Beatty and Edith shared a love of art and ancient literature and she encouraged his evolving collecting practices. It was likely the fashion conscious Edith who prompted him to acquire this fashion magazine.
The Journal was founded by Tom Antongini, writer, and secretary and friend to the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. It included society columns, poetic texts, anecdotal observations, book and theatre reviews, and fashion reports. Thanks to his connection with D’Annunzio, Antongini was able to collaborate with notable writers of the day, like Anatole France, who wrote the introduction to the first issue: ‘…One knows nothing about a society when one knows nothing of the fashions that prevailed in it. Costumes reveal customs…"

… If it were simply a matter of clothing oneself, fashion would certainly not exist. But it is above all a matter of attiring oneself, and whoever says attire says ornament, and whoever says ornament says art… So, ladies, be stylish. It is a great civic duty. Though Notre-Dame is a cathedral, it is nonetheless une dame. May your exterior be also the cathedral of your soul …’

Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (1874-1945), Journal des Dames et des Modes, no.11, 10 September 1912.