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Charles Baudelaire

Thus I am led to regard adornment as one of the signs of the primitive nobility of the human soul.

                              Photo: Felix Nadar, Baudelaire

Review, analyse everything that is natural, all the actions and desires of absolutely natural man:  you will find nothing that is not horrible.  Everything that is beautiful, and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

***

Contrary to what a lot of thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance.  For the perfect dandy, delight in these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind...What then can this passion be, which has crystalized into a doctrine, and has formed a number of outstanding devotees, this unwritten code that has moulded so proud a brotherhood?  It is, above all, the burning desire to create a personal form of originality, within the external limits of social conventions.  

***

"Fashion must therefore be thought of as a symptom of the taste for the ideal that floats on the surface in the human brain, above all the coarse, earthy and disgusting things that life according to nature accumulates, as a sublime distortion of nature, or rather as a permanent and constantly renewed effort to reform nature." Charles Baudelaire,”The Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists.

All citations are taken from "The Painter of Modern Life." Beauty, as Baudelaire puts it so well, is composed, not always natural. His comments complement Nevelson's statements perfectly: Baudelaire is more philosphical, Nevelson more direct and personal.  Both emphasize the thought and depth which accompany the construction of a beautiful sartorial surface.

Vladimir Nabokov

The Art of the Detail 

 ..., of the little thing which a man observes and greets with a friendly nod of the spirit while the crowd around him is being driven by some common impulse to some common goal. Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature.

This post has more to do with a key idea to self-styling than the personal style of its author.  In this wonderful passage Nabokov identifies one of the most important elements to great writing--the art of the detail.  Although Nabokov is talking about literature, the idea can be applied to other creative activities, including self-styling.  We think of the way Charles Eames wore his belt at the side, Andy Warhol's wigs, Dali's mustache, or Nureyev's hats. These details often become signature pieces of our subjects. It's what sets the "uncommon" from the "common," what separates the dress of creative minds from that of the rest of the world.

Louise Nevelson, pt.1

I’m what you call a real collage. 

I never underestimate one’s appearance because you project something.  

                                         

I always had a flair for clothes and liked them because I have a whole feeling about appearance.  Because I think you very carefully can identify a person by their appearance.  It's important.  It's not skin deep.  It's much deeper.  And consequently in youth I had this kind of flamboyance and wore good clothes and wore attractive things.  So I think it was taken for granted that a woman of that sort couldn't be totally dedicated.  So I think that because of their, not mine, their preconceived ideas that an artist had to look -- that the older and the uglier they looked, the more they were convinced that there was a dedication.  Well, that again is preconceived clichés.  That's what I've been trying to break down all my life.  And I still am. 

Because, you see, again what probably has given me my vision is that I have not been caught in clichés.  When I was growing up, it was fashionable if you were pretty to say, "Well, beauty is skin deep."  Well, beauty is not skin deep.  Beauty is beauty.  In other words, I would like to say that the whole thing that we're talking about has one note in my life, as you can see.  And that is the important thing to me.  Now, another thing.  Let us take Beethoven, just because everyone knows Beethoven.  And we're talking about his time and in the Occidental world.  Now in music we have octaves and there are eight notes and then some half notes.  And out of eight notes he built a world of sound.  All the things that he created are really out of eight notes.  Now those eight notes go higher, an octave higher, an octave lower.  But there are only eight notes in an octave.  Now I need only one note.  And that is my note of consciousness.  And that is what I want more of: my own consciousness. Louise Nevelson, Archives of American Art.

Could there be a more forceful statement than this about the relationship between mind and beauty? I was aware of Nevelson's striking appearance and had seen many of her sculptures, but knew nothing about her bold statements about dress. She espouses an unabashed credo lambasting all those who think that an interest dress is superficial. I love the top photo by Richard Avedon: it embodies perfectly her statement about being a "real visual collage" with her elaborate hat, bold sculptural necklaces and intricate pieces of clothing.   

George Gordon, Lord Byron

If you had seen Lord Byron, you could scarcely disbelieve him—so beautiful a countenance I scarcely ever saw—his teeth so many stationary smiles—his eyes the open portals of the sun – things of light, and for light – and his forehead so ample, and yet so flexible, passing from marble smoothness into a hundred wreathes and lines and dimples correspondent to the feelings and sentiments he is uttering. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk.

                                                                                                                      

I have some very "magnifique" Albanian dresses, the only expensive articles in this country. They cost 50 guineas each and have so much gold they would cost in England two hundred. Byron, Letter to his Mother, 12 November 1809. 

Of all his fancy dress uniforms, Byron took special delight in this costume;  thus turbaned and brocaded, he sat for his famous portrait by the painter Thomas Phillips...In his fantasy, Byron now became what he beheld:  an Oriental potentate, powerful and free, to whom nothing was forbidden.”  Benita Eisler, Byron.

                                                                    

Coleridge's paean is nothing short of a rhapsody.  Bryon's beauty was legendary: women apparently fainted upon seeing him. Top portrait is by Richard Westall; Thomas Phillips portrait of 1835 is entitled Lord Byron in Albanian Dress.  

Jean Cocteau

Beauty cannot be recognized by a cursory glance. 

                                               Photo: Irving Penn, Jean Cocteau

Each thread of Cocteau’s tie, vest, and suit is etched in light and shadow; the patterns and the texture pop out in vivid, tactile detail.  The drape of his coat over an extended arm adds drama and balance to the composition. Cocteau is dressed in the sartorial attire of a dandy, which, by all accounts, he was.  There is an air of flamboyance about him, until you look at his face.  His dead-serious expression registers the fierce intelligence of a keen observer, as if he is taking our measure while deigning to allow us to take his. Philip Gefter, "Irving Penn, RIP." 

Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images. 

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

 

Cocteau's statements are far more elliptical than those made by Dalí or Oscar Wilde. Cocteau espouses a much more introspective notion of dress and beauty. His quotes stress the ephemerality of fashion and beauty's relation to notions of ugliness.

Cocteau embodies the idea of "intellectual beauty" in the Penn portrait. I love the play of pattern in his attire--glen plaid suit, houndstooth sweater, and striped tie.  His face radiates a fierce intelligence. The angularity of his body adds to the beautiful line created by staged pose. His hands are carefully posed in all the photos, adding drama in some, composure in another.

Charles and Ray Eames

The Eameses were very precise about their clothes, commissioning them from Dorothy Jenkins, an Oscar-winning designer who did costumes for many films, including South Pacific, Night of the Iguana, and The Sound of Music. The effect of the Eameses’ costume was the  professional couple as a matching set, carefully positioned like any other object in the layout. The uniform clothes transformed the couple into a designer object that could be moved around the frame or from picture to picture.  It was always the layout that was the statement, not the objects.  And the layout was constantly reworked, rearranged.”  Beatriz Colomina, “Reflections on the Eames House,” The Work of Charles and Ray Eames:  A Legacy of Invention.

Ray Eames favored crisp white blouses, trim square-necked jumpers, waist-cropped jackets and dirndl skirts, a way of dressing which suited her and reflected her Austrian roots. 

Charles Eames preferred to dress himself in similar clothes every day as a uniform – something he believed saved his energy for decision making at the office. The uniform: flat front khaki pants, thin belt, buckled on the side, bow tie. From August 1959 Vogue: "He likes to wear yellow-beiges, yellowish-greens, shirts of wonderful subtleties, roughly textured jackets, often with silver Navaho buttons which his wife, Ray, sews on a with special curved needle. These buttons are a partial clue to both the Eameses. They see the beauty in small oddities that others may miss. They are intensely practical. They work as partners, both designers, both filmmakers, both at ease in their life.”

Much has been written about the couple's many design collaborations such as the Eames lounge chair, the molded plywood chairs, and their house in the Pacific Palisades. Their clothing choices were no less distinctive. A PBS documentary in the American Masters series, Charles and Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter, provides information on their clothing preferences. Talk about the 'layout as statement': the couple's arms and legs mirror one another in the two top photos. Charles Eames and Oscar Wilde have a thing about buttons!