Photos By Gail
African American designer Ann Lowe (1898 – 1981) learned to sew from her dressmaker mother, Janie Cole, and her grandmother, Georgia Thompkins. One of her earliest pleasures was crafting fabric flowers, a skill that became one of the defining characteristics of her beautifully constructed occasion gowns for debutante and brides. This Evening Dress designed by Lowe for A. F Chantilly (1968) presents a terrific example of this skill.
All Photos By Gail
In 1988, film director John Waters created a new level of shock by making a family friendly, PG-rated movie. Set in 1962, two years before the Civil Rights Act, Hairspray centers on Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), a self-identified “pleasantly plump” teenage girl, who attempts to racially integrate a teen dance show.
Continue reading Pink Thing of The Day: Tracy Turnblad’s Roach Dress from Hairspray
Photo By Gail
This brushed polyester dress from Comme de Garcon’s spring 2018 Multidimensional Graffiti collection depicts artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s seventeenth-century painting of the Emperor Rudolf II as Vertumnus, the Roman God of Seasons.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Roman God of Seasons Dress By Comme des Garçon
Photos By Gail
Jason Wu partnered with Coca Cola (founded in 1892) for his fall 2021 collection that was inspired by ideas of 1950s Americana and the nostalgia of the general store. For his Coca cola logo print dress in vibrant red chiffon, he researched, coke’s evolving graphics in the companies, archives, re-creating the logo in different languages.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Coca Cola Logo Print Dress By Jason Wu
Photos By Gail
Named after a Laboue village in northern Dakar, this Yoff dress is inspired by the energy and urban environment of the city. Senegalese designer Selly Raby Kane created her Autumn/Winter 2017 collection, which includes the Yoff Dress, as a celebration of Dakar and its “transgressive, creative processes, and cross -disciplinary vision,” The collection is named for the imagined location of 17 Rue Jules Ferry.
Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum.
