Paris–New York 1925
127 6 PARIS–NEW YORK 1925 JEAN PATOU’S “ADVERTISING” Caroline Evans Introduction Through the lens of a single dress, this chapter looks at fashion and modernism in the mid-1920s. A close reading of its design motif, an embroidered Eiffel Tower, leads to a consideration of its wider cultural, commercial and ideological meanings, in both America and France. In looking at what Paris signifi ed to Americans, and America to the French, the chapter identifi es some of the contradictions and complexities of modernist identities across the fi elds of fashion, commerce and visual culture in the period. The modernism it identifi es, however, is not that of the artistic avant-garde but of work, business and popular culture, in particular new forms of advertising and promotion. It links fashion to the streamlined, organizational structures of modern commerce rather than to the seamless, mechanical forms of modernist visual culture. In this, it follows a number of other writers who have elaborated on the relationship of fashion to modernism beyond the realms of art and art history. The architect and art historian Mario Lupano and Alessandra Vaccari have argued that early twentieth-century fashion was an engine of modernism, not merely a refl ex of modernity; furthermore, they assert, the success of fashion in this respect eclipses other attempts to emancipate the relationship of fashion and modernism from narrow histories of art. 1 Similarly, the literary scholar Michael Levenson has argued that modernism is not just what he terms “soft culture” but also consists of “hard, causal powers of modern action” that include habits and routines: “the pace of walking, a style of gazing, a tensing of the muscles.
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