Parma Violet: Flower Power

From the beautiful 'Geranium' pink to this week's thread colour, 'Parma Violet'.  A colour with a long history with a flower back to the 1500's, and an association with one of the most powerful men in the history of Europe and the two women he loved.  If you Google Parma violet, you will be referred to; the famous violet flower, oil and acrylic paint colours, cupcakes, nail varnish, eye shadow and perfume.  This is a colour, that evokes the feminine, a colour that is still loved today.  But purple is not the most popular colour when it comes to clothing, and one that you either seem to love or hate.

Photo Courtesy of M.Pierre Barandou, Geraniums d' Aquitaine, S.A., Agen, France

Parma is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, built before the time of the Roman Empire.  Parma is known for its architecture, University and picturesque countryside.  It is also famous for its association with a flower the Parma violet known as a breed since 16th century, and cultivated in Grasse in the South of France, since 1868.

Empress Marie-Louise and the King of Rome, by Joseph Franque, 1812. 

Napoleon Bonaparte's, second wife Marie-Louise was the first one who distilled violet and made her personal and very own perfume. When Marie-Louise was parted from Napoleon by his deportation to Elba, she lived in Parma as the Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla.  Upon her arrival in Parma, Marie-Louise personally controlled the selection of the Parma violet in the Botanical garden.  Light violet, the colour of the flower, became her own favourite colour. Along with the nuns from the Annunciata monastery she produced the essence from the flowers and the leaves of the violet, and succeeded in distilling a perfume that became her personal fragrance, its formula kept secret by the monks.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812, by Jacques-Louis David

The delicate violet also seduced Napoleon who took it as his own flower.    

                                              

1808 Empress Josephine by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, from the Wallace Collection, London

  After his death a few violets picked from his beloved wife Josephine de Beauharnais' grave were found in his neck medallion.  I love this painting of Josephine, look at that wonderful ruff.  Ahhh ruff's it has been so long since I have made one.  After this post I am going to lose myself in making one.

So what more could you want than that, love and power, hmmmm chocolate, Champagne, diamonds ........ 

But how can we now translate this to a dress, and to be even more defined than that, a dress that could have been made and worn in Tauranga.  Well the answer is delightfully simple, a dress in the same colour from a pattern from the collection in the Brain Watkins House.

Image courtesy of the Tauranga Historical  Society

How does this dress, from a Maudella pattern qualify, apart from the fact that it is shown on the pattern cover made in the same purple shade as the thread?

Image courtesy of the Tauranga Historical  Society

Don't you love the green shoes?  But I digress, what seals the deal for me, is the fact that the model is holding a bunch of violets to her nose, and breathing in their evocative fragrance.  And of course it is spunky little dress don't you think, I love the little kick pleat at the back, fitted skirt and the belt tailor-made in the same fabric as the dress.

The Colour of Her Dress

The colour of thread that jumped out of the box and said, "pick me, pick me", this week was this luscious pink. Never a favourite colour, I find myself warming to pink and some some of its brighter hues and the way they sit against other colours.

This pink is named Geranium, a name that conjures up images of the Mediterranean coast, with the decks of plastered villas lined with pots of brightly coloured geraniums.   

Isn't it the most wonderful pink?

So what dress would the seamstress who owned the box of threads have sewn.  This 60's cocktail dress caught my eye, especially in the pink.


However I have noticed a definite lean in responses to my posts on: The Colour of Her Dress, towards the fabulous, rather than what a Tauranga seamstress would have had sewn.  This Blog is all about adventures and so I think, The Colour of Her Dress is going to shoot off in a slightly different direction as it appears to be where you want to go, and it is definitely where I want to go.

So let us start with this 1959 Cristo Balenciaga evening dress.
A delicious interpretation of our pink don't you think.

And another one from Cristo Balenciaga, also from 1959, but this time a dinner dress.  The draping is exquisite, such a shame to sit down to dinner on it.


As wonderful as the above dresses are, this colour's story has drawn me to Paris and New York.

 Maybe it is because the American woman who wore this dress worked in New York, on one of the most legendary films about New York and yet was to me, quintessentially Parisian. 

 And yet the dress she made famous in the film she worked on: Breakfast at Tiffany's, was not a pink dress, but this black dress.

 Both dresses were designed by the famous French designer, Givenchy, and yet the pink dress has remained hidden in the shadows.


Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy, born February 21, 1927, is a French aristocrat and fashion designer who founded The House of Givenchy in 1952. He is famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn,as well as clothing for clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy.  (From Wikipedia)


http://www.givenchy.com/

Nobody remembers the pink dress, and there is nothing I love more than the underdog, so lets take a closer look.

Here in a scene from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly has taken up with the dashing Brazilian Jose, and she is briefly seen in a beautiful hot pink gown (teamed with matching tiara!) which is a departure from her earlier slinky black dresses.

What fascinates me as a museum professional, is what happens to dresses like this, designed by iconic designers, and worn by fabulous movie stars.  The  hot pink cocktail dress actually worn by Audrey during filming of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, ended up in a big Christie’s auction for yet another round of Audrey Hepburn memorabilia. It sold for nearly ten times its estimated selling price of $20,000-30,000 US dollars. The winner of the dress was a European bidder who wished to remain anonymous. 

The same thing had happened with the black dress that had sold in a previous auction.  There too the buyer had wanted to remain anonymous, but it eventually came out that the dress was bought by the House of Givenchy.

And then the pink dress reappeared as part of an exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, a museum located in The Hague, the capital city of the Southern Netherlands (also known as Holland).  The museum owns the world's largest collection of Mondrians and one of the largest fashion collections in Europe, in which all the great couture houses are well represented. The original pink Givenchy dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is just one famous item in the collection. It also includes earlier pieces that illustrate the history of couture: Worth, Poiret and Vionnet, who were forerunners of the famous couturiers who now define the look of Paris’s Avenue Montaigne.

The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag's website exhibition card reads:  Hubert de Givenchy, Cocktail ensemble: dress and jacket, Paris autumn collection 1960, silk, silk ribbon appliqués, sequins and glass beads, K 9-1988.1/2. Worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).  The K 9-1988.1/2 number would be the catalogue number for the dress, so if you wanted to visit the museum and ask to see this dress, knowing this number would assist the Registraar to locate it.

Here is a detail of the decoration of the dress, I am not sure if the colours really work, and for me the dress is not an absolute stunner, I think it is the story that fascinates me more than anything.


So my darlings, let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoyed my detective hunt, into the life of a famous dress, that was pushed into the shadows and brought out into the light of fame once again for a short while, before it will be packed away in archival tissue and hidden in the safe darkness of a museum storage facility, waiting for another moment of fame.

The Colour of Her Dress

This week my precious darlings the colour I have chosen from my box of threads, is Light Kingfisher blue.  What a wonderful colour, exotic and  iridescent.  This colour would need a vibrant dress full of life and fun.

 I love that these reels of thread are made in Great Britain, how often do you see that on anything you buy today?

The first dress is a design by John Cavanagh, an English designer.  The dress pattern is from the 1950's.  I love the front with its standing collar, but decided this dress was too formal for our kingfisher blue.

  

 This 1950's McCall pattern draws inspiration from ethnic cultures, and the blue design was definitely in the running.

This 1950's design for McCall's patterns, by Givenchy, is striking.

Here we see the dress worn by a live model, and I have to say, it is to die for.

For me though, this little 1960's number with its tulip skirt and fitted bodice is perfect for the kingfisher blue.  Made in a heavy cotton satin fabric with a low sheen, and worn with pizazz, the dress would be so much fun to wear, a party dress that would steal the show.


What do you think, have I pegged it or got it all wrong?

The Colour of Her Dress

This week's thread colour is Orange Lily.  There were a few contestants for this colour

Courtesy Tauranga Historical Society

 This pant suit from 1956, which was one of the free patterns in the Australian Home Journal magazine for October.

Courtesy Tauranga Historical Society

 I love the button over-skirt shown with the green pant suit, and the accessories, the orange headscarf and blue sunglasses.

 The culottes from 1969 are my favourite, aren't they to die for.

 This 1960,s shift dress caught my eye, just cos I love the shape and cut.  I would not wear it in this colour though, as cute as it is.

So choices my fashionista darlings, which one do you love, wanna wear, or think our lady would have sewn with her orange lily thread?

The Colour of Her Dress

 One of the wonderful things about working with heritage collections is that the word gets out that you love anything to do with heritage textiles.  Because of this I am sometimes offered treasures that others no longer want.  This box and its contents is one such case.

Inside the box is a collection of threads on wooden cotton reels.

 Mercerised cottons, machine twists, and polyester threads, with colour names like: Orange Lily, Light Kingfisher, Sage, and Geranium.

 The colours are fabulous, and as I looked at them and wondered about the woman who used these threads, I thought what a vibrant woman she must have been with such a dynamic selection of colours.  Then I began to wonder what each colour thread had been used to make.

So I thought my precious darlings that once a week I would pick a reel of thread and find, or design the dress that I imagine would have been sewn with the thread.


The first colour is seemingly not a colour at all, but a neutral, ivory.   For me these neutral shades have a subtle and classic beauty.

The dress I have chosen for ivory, is a 1955 Pierre Balmain dress that I believe is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Isn't it dreamy?