Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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THE MILLINERY SHOP by Edgar Degas (French,1834-1917): 100 x 110.7 centimeters, 1879-1876. Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection. kind of self-portrait. Critics did not consider Degas's millinery paintings to be frivolous "articles de Paris" but serious moral and economic commentaries, although their exact meanings were open to wildly different interpretations. Appropriately, the fashion credentials and affinities of male artists are also closely scrutinized. Manet possessed natural elegance, and critics held up his tasteful bourgeois wardrobe as proof that he was no eccentric bohemian, despite his unconventional and sometimes shocking canvases. Frédéric Bazille's letters to his parents are full of obsessive musings about his wardrobe. Renoir, who came from a family of tailors and dressmakers, and Monet were frustrated fashionistas, full of knowledge and interest but limited by their social and economic circumstances. (Both married couturières.) Their fascination with the narrative and moral complexities of fashion—both shared and deeply personal—still resonates today. SUGGESTED READING Groom, Gloria, edited by. Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Tétart-Vittu. Françoise and Philippe Thiébaut, L'Impressionnisme et la mode, Paris: Musée d'Orsay/Skira-Flammarion, 1012. 37 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 THE WHITE SLIPPERS by Eva Gonzalès (French, 1849-1883); 23 x 32 centimeters, 1879-1880. Collection: Vera Wang.