Two Wishes

Art Deco Style from Vionnet

Yesterday, Jezebel ran a blurb saying the legendary French design house Vionnet was recently sold. Embarrassed that I had never even heard of Vionnet, I ran to the Internet to learn more....  Turns out, Madeleine Vionnet invented the "bias cut" in the early 1920s, setting the stage for the beautifully flowing satin gowns that practically define Art Deco style.  Vionnet was also the first designer to offer "ready to wear" designs in the U.S.  At one point, her design studios employed over 1,000 seamstresses.

And the clothes?  Gorgeous! 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has several Vionnet gowns in its collection. This is from 1938.

And so is this exquisitely detailed piece.

I even love the drawings of Vionnet fashions from the period -- what perfect Art Deco style.

 

OK, so this final piece is actually a Schiaparelli.  But it's from the same period, and so pretty I had to throw it in!

J. Peterman Lives!

Deep dark secret -- I've never been a Seinfeld fan.  There was a time when I joined Ed for dinner every day after work, and I actually made him turn off the early-evening Seinfeld reruns that he used to watch as we prepared dinner.  They just bugged me too much.

Despite this, I've always been fascinated by the way the show uses real-life company J. Peterman in its plot-lines. 

When I first moved to New York City in 1999, I commuted via Grand Central Station every day and exited next to a big J. Peterman store.  If you're not familiar with the stores, their theme was sort of 1920's world traveler -- think wealthy British colonial or scion of the Rockefellers on a Continental fling.  I didn't go in very often, and bought even less, but I always thought there was something sort of magical about the place.

Unfortunately, their prices were not so magical.  Whether partially for this reason or not, J. Peterman went bankrupt in 1999.  In fact, it turns out they had already filed when I was passing the store that summer.  I went away for a year, and when I returned in 2001, a Kenneth Cole store stood proudly in J. Peterman's old Grand Central spot.

I thought that was the end of things.  But, as we all know, I'm a hopeless Ebay addict.  And a few months ago, I stumbled across (by which I mean, uh, purchased) this J. Peterman skirt on Ebay.  The listing actually included the skirt's catalog page -- the first time I had actually seen part of the J. Peterman catalog.  (Sorry, make that the J. Peterman "Owner's Manual" -- their phrase....)  The writing is exactly like they described on Seinfeld!:

I loved the catalogs so much that I wound up buying a bunch of back issues for $1.00 on Ebay.  (Yes, you can buy everything on Ebay!)  And, as hoped, they make great inspiration for sewing / designing / crafting.  It helps that many of the clothes come with a line drawing of the item, so you can picture its clean, basic lines:

But my big surprise is that J. Peterman is back!  Turns out the catalogs weren't old, they were dated 2006 and 2007.  The company didn't die in bankruptcy at all, it just closed the one store I knew and cut back its business operations for a bit.  So if you're interested in signing up for the famous catalog, you can still do so easily on the website.