 Good evening. Thank you for all joining us tonight. I'm Pamela Horn, director of cross-platform publishing and strategic partnerships at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and we're so pleased that you're here for this evening's design talk inspired by the Jazz Age American style in the 1920s. The Associated Press calls the Jazz Age a multi-sensory blockbuster of a show, and it's so true. I'm hoping that you all have seen it, and if not, that you'll be able to find your way to the galleries. It's here through August. The music and the era both recorded and live activate our galleries, and they highlight these sumptuous textiles, the furniture, architecture, industrial design, and of course fashion. The clothing, shoes, and jewelry on view are lavish interplay of color, texture, light, and form that could only lead to a sensory overload. And if the silk, rhinestone, and satin green shoes go missing, don't look at me. Fashion's revolutionary designs of the 1920s were driven in part by the rising influence of American women in the world, with the power to vote finally achieved in 1920. American women were moving beyond traditional confines of the home with roles of homemaker and they were moving into the workforce. They also traveled and shopped more widely and especially in Paris and New York City thanks to modern ocean liners built to transport them back and forth the Atlantic. All of these fascinating developments and more will be the focus of tonight's discussion among fashion historians Caroline Milbank and Jan Reeder and Sarah Coffin, the exhibition's curator. Caroline Reynolds Milbank is a cataloger and appraiser of antique and couture clothing, formerly of Sotheby's, where she was also in charge of the antique clothing auctions and is so currently for Doyle, New York. She has also curated several exhibitions on fashion and her writing has appeared in Vogue, Architectural Digest, the New York Times magazines and many other publications. She's contributed essays to several museum catalogs and books and published numerous works of fashion history including the sumptuous fashion a timeline in photographs 1850 through today. Caroline is also a member of Cooper Hewitt's Collections Committee. Jan Glyre Reeder has brought experience in the field of costume and textiles as auction house specialist, appraiser, curator and author. From 2005 to 2009 she was curator and director of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded costume documentation project at the Birkeland Museum which is a three-year initiative assessing and inventorying the museum's historic 25,000 piece fashion collection. She also curated American High Style fashioning and national collection for the Birkeland Museum and authored the accompanying publication. In 2014 she co-curated and authored the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition and publication Charles James Beyond Fashion with the Costume Institute's Curator-in-Charge Harold Coda. I'll now turn the stage over to our panelists and speakers. Enjoy the evening. Good evening. Jesse Franklin Turner was the first American fashion designer to establish a financially successful and long-term couture business in New York. For the 20 years from the time she opened her first salon in 1922 until her retirement in 1942, she provided a range of luxurious, leisure-based clothing suited to the active and privileged lifestyles of American society's most distinguished women and the international Beaumont as well. An early participant in post-World War I nationalistic campaign to establish a uniquely American design idiom, she, unlike her contemporaries, neither bought, sold, nor copied Paris fashions and did not rely upon Parisian or French design as a source of inspiration, looking instead to the arts of the near and far East ethnographic cultures and European art historical works. Casual sports dresses of hand-decorated textiles for attending outdoor spectator activities such as polo matches, horse and dog shows, as you might see here, day dresses for warm weather climbs, especially Palm Beach, bathing and bridal wear were all on offer at her salon, along with the feminine, elegant at-home evening gowns which were her specialty. She gained an international reputation for her beautiful T-gowns, a form of intimate attire initially appropriate to be worn in the privacy of the Boudoir, or at moments with intimate friends at home, but which in her hands became works of fashion art to increasingly be worn out and about to anything but the most formal public affairs. Turner's textiles were custom designed, woven and dyed with colors devised by her in her own work rooms. She did, at times, use high-end French, especially Rodier fabrics, but had them also woven to her specifications as well. She also had a large private cache of antiques and world textiles that she was constantly augmenting for use in her designs and trims, dress parts and whole garments. The Wellfield Turner clientele attracted were the upper echelons of America's social, artistic and theatrical realms. As she put it, they were not necessarily the richest or involved in the most spectacular phases of society, but are the women who really make society in America. They appreciated clothing as art and sought to distinguish themselves by wearing a tire that was apart from fashion trends. As Turner put it, independent of fashion. What you're looking at here are actually ads that Jesse published, but I wanted to point out the kind of woman that she was designing for sort of strong-minded, independent, intellectual people, women who were individualists and they were not necessarily glamorous but distinctive looking. The socially elite clientele hailed from the high-profile families who developed and sustained America's industrial, mercantile and financial sectors with names such as Goodyear, Morton as in Salt, Whitney, Vanderbilt, Strawbridge as in department stores, Gould and Warburg and E.F. Hutton, of course, in finance. Turner was already prominent in these rarefied social circles by 1924 when she designed the clothes for the wedding of Cornelius Stuyvesant Vanderbilt and Sir John Amher Cecil, held at Biltmore, the family's estate, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. So on your right is the bride on the eve of her wedding wearing a design by Jesse Franklin Turner. It is known as the bird dress because it is embroidered with tiny minibirds. And on the left is my favorite, one of my favorite photos of all time. Here is Mrs. Cornelia, no Florence, Vanderbilt, Twombly, Burden, also wearing either the same dress or it looks to me like exactly the same dress but anyway, she's wearing it very nonchalantly with her St. Bernard and at the dog show, the caption meeting best dog in show. And keep in mind this dress because I'm going to say a little bit more about it later. Here's the wedding party at the Biltmore because it's obviously a very grand affair. The Bridesmaid dresses were of Japanese silk printed with blue and white floral pattern. And you can get a little sense of it there. It seems to me it's quite unusual for a Bridesmaid dress at that time. It's an interesting note that the maid of honor wore a long van, not Jesse. Turner also dressed some of the most well-heeled artistic crowd. The set and costume designer, Eileen Bernstein, the first woman to be accepted into the United Scenic Artists Union in 1926 and later a founder of the Museum of Costume, which became the Costume Institute at the Met, was a friend and client. Here is one of her dresses that is in the Costume Institute and you'll note that the embroidered textile on the dresses, I believe, is an authentic ethnographic piece. Given their theatricality and distinctiveness, it's not surprising that Turner's designs attracted all of the prominent American actresses appearing on the New York stage during the 20s and 30s. They wore her fashions, mostly the elaborate at-home attire, on and off the stage and posing in fashion editorials. The list is a who's who of marquee names. Ilke Chase, Faye Bainter, Cornelia Oda Skinner, Barbara Stanwick, June Knight, and Dorothy Gish were all among the headliners. You're looking at Ina Claire in a medieval gown designed by Jesse that she wore in the 1930 film The Royal Family. Here is Ilke Chase in a beautiful fringe teagun in 1928. I'll just mention that beginning in 1928-29 was the beginning of Jesse's real heyday and teaguns became very much more a part of fashion again after the roaring 20s when no one was lying around and everyone was busy running. The pace was very hectic and then when the 30s came the pace slowed down. People were staying at home or prohibition was lifted and so the teagun once again became very popular. Here's Thelma Tipson. She's not as well-known but I love this image of her. She was in a play called The Blessed Event and the caption read, ready for lounging or, it seems to me, whatever. In PJ's pajamas, a flesh-colored satin with flowing wings and a belt of Chinese yellow tipped with red. Very typical Turner color combinations. And finally actresses, June Knight, in an evening coat made from an antique Russian priest's robe. So the textiles are brocade made from a robe. And Marta Abba, who was starring in Tevarich at that time in 1936 in Lapis Lazuli wool pajamas with a red jacket with antique Indian mirror embroidery. The publicity generated by these prominent displays of Jesse's elegant on-team finery spread her fame beyond national borders and I propose establish her as the first American designer to have an influence on the international fashion scene. An unidentified theater program from 1933 asserted, nothing more readily induces an alluring langer than a trailing tea gown. The fashioning of such gowns is a highly specialized field and although it's traditional that they do these things better abroad, it's a field led beyond question by an American, Jesse Franklin Turner. Born in Peoria, Illinois in 1881, Jesse began her career in women's leisure-based fashion as a teenager when she convinced the proprietor of a local lingerie store to hire her with the promise of improving the quality and range of his merchandise. Through a series of related jobs in the Midwest and then in New York, her talents for choosing and working with world textiles caught the attention of Paul Bonwit, co-founder of the specialty department store, Bonwit Teller. And he hired her initially to be the Oriental buyer, but increasingly she became a designer as well. And there she is about, she's about age 30 and that's 1910. He hired her in 1911. By 1915, at Bonwit's, Bonwit had commissioned Jesse to open a factory in the Philippines to produce a fine linen lingerie. And the caption on this reads, from specially designed models and patterns, distinctively Bonwit Teller and which for fineness are the full equal of French undergarments. So early on she was in on the French American rivalry. These are models that were published in Vogue in 1919, sort of almost at the end of her tenure at Bonwit's and they don't credit her, Bonwit's never credited her, but I'm very sure that these are her designs. And you can see they're very languorous and very full and have a lot of volume at this stage. In fact it said, now that the war is over we can be as luxuriously draped in voluminous and feminine as ever. A major connection that Jesse made when she was at Bonwit's was with Paul Bonwit's friend the fashion impresario, Morris de Camp Crawford, known as MDC, who by 1915 was fashion editor of the industry's trade paper Women's Wear and a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. Now here you see a typical Crawford spread in Women's Wear in his column and here he's promoting the costume from world cultures. His column was called Design Department. The interruption of flow, of creative inspiration and fine materials from Europe, particularly Paris, precipitated by the onset of World War I, galvanized Crawford and other influential New York industry and museum leaders, particularly Herbert Spindon of the American Museum of Natural History and Stuart Culin at the Brooklyn Museum to spearhead a campaign to develop a distinctively American design identity in fashion and textiles. The idea was to encourage designers to use rich ethnographic resources of museum collections in order to find inspiration that would lead to that end. I think that this quote from Henry Osborn, who was the president of the American Museum of Natural History at that time, sums it up rather nicely. I'm very optimistic about the influence of this to create an independent American taste to design. The significance is that the personal decoration of women should reflect their spirit and morale and not that of women of another country. The American woman has certain distinct ideas about life and conduct and these ideas should be reflected in her dress more or less. The American women should not express in their clothing decadence, which is so widespread in the countries of Europe today. Recognizing Turner's talents in textiles and fashion, Crawford chose her to be the featured designer for the campaign. He published a picture of one of the first garments that she made for this initiative in the December 1917 issue of Vogue. It was, so that's the actual spread in Vogue, and the garment was a luxurious, free-flowing at-home gown of soft silk rose duvetine and blue chiffon with woe embroidery, and that is on your right. It is Turner's interpretation of the skin, fur, and sinew dancing coat with bead embroidery worn by the Coyac peoples of Siberia from the collection at the American Museum of Natural History, and that one is, of course, on your left. The skillful transposition of the original artifact's ceremonial function and protective materials to a modern at-home gown of soft filmy fabric accented with fur as a luxurious trim rather than as a protective material. Expertly illustrated Crawford's mission to create a unique American design by interpreting rich global museum resources into modern objects, and this is what she continued to do throughout her career. The combination of this campaign, this two-year campaign, was the exhibition that was entitled, as you see on the screen, it's a long name, the exhibition of industrial art in textiles and costumes. This is the, Jesse had her own exhibition space, which was, there were only a handful of them, and you can see the idea of the exhibition was to show modern objects and creations and their historic inspirations. So here, you can see this is a Coptic design, which I believe is there. These are Persian tent panels, and I think there's their contemporary form and this is I think at the Turkish coat and there's the wonderful classic turner T-gown with that pattern on the back, sorry. So Turner's experiences as buyer and designer, her travels abroad and her close relationships with New York's top museum and fashion industry personnel, as well as Bonwood's socially elite clients, set her in a unique position when she set out on her own. These images from her first salon exemplify her signature mix of contemporary aesthetics and the timelessness of ancient cultures, upon which she built her professional identity, and which today we would call branding. The salon was designed by her in conjunction with Park Avenue Galleries. The scheme is silver, chartreuse, and black. Both the walls and the ceilings are in silver leaf. You can picture that. The sofa is silver velvet, which she designed, and the sofa has green and black piping, which is a favorite dressmaking detail that she adopted from Persian clothing. So you can see that. The woodwork and the drapes are a vivid chartreuse, and the floor is a jade green, and the Buddha image over the black sofa all create this sort of overall Asian, I think, aesthetic. But in contrast, the contemporary light panel with a geometric shape, the lamps, you see the lamps there, and also what you can't see was an ebony cabinet inlaid with silver zigzag pattern, which was clearly a contemporary deco piece. I'll add the contemporary sensibility to the room. There are also two second empire side chairs that add a historical note to add to the eclectic grouping. I think that you can see these two gowns, one very deco in feel, the black and the white one, and the other cut like a Turkish robe with her characteristic piping along here. They both, I think, both of those belong in that room. Now, just a moment about the textiles. Her, as you remember before, the woman with the dog and the bride wearing a textile that is just like the ones on the screen now. The inspiration for those textiles is this small little blouse that is from Delhi. It's a very common form, I think, that was worn by Parsi women. It's a miracle that it has survived because it belonged to, it was in M.D.C. Crawford's collection and now it finally ended up in the Brooklyn Museum collection and fortunately we were able to get it transferred along with the costumes from Brooklyn so that it would still be with its friends. You can see that there's an address in the collection that has the bird embroidery on it. She also produced this textile in woven forms so it was a major product in her early years. Finally, I think these two pieces exemplified her use of antique fabrics as well as her interpretation of the antique fabrics on your right, on your left is a dress that I think is fashioned from an antique piece and on your right is a wonderful exotic woman wearing a jacket in a custom woven contemporary textile. Finally, you have to always end with this wonderful image. She created a beautiful teagound using pieces from the Russian priest's robe and made an identical advertisement with the portrait of a young woman by Antonio Palvallo from 1465. You can see how Jessie has sort of used her same techniques and strategies as she developed in the 20s throughout her career and never wavered from her belief that she could create designs that were all from her own aesthetic and were not reliant on any other design inspiration. Thank you. Excuse us, I will do a little change over here. I'm Sarah Coffin for those of you who don't know and I'm head of the product design and decorative arts department and the lead Cooper Hewitt curator on the Jazz Age exhibition in Emily or who's the assistant curator for it and for American modern and contemporary design. We thought we'd start out with Maya and Emily asking a couple of questions. However, both your presentations were so full that I'm rather inclined to totally trash them and ask you another one at least to start out. I think you answered a couple in your presentations. One of the things that I came to realize in doing this show is there's a huge cross-fertilization between designers of all media and you mentioned Jan about Paul Rodier with Jesse Franklin Turner and Paul Frankel, the architect designer actually carried Paul Rodier's fabrics in his New York gallery and you can see some of these fabrics as used as a blotter and as a cheer cover in the Mario Lago desk and chair that is up in the exhibition. So I think that even it's so important to realize that fashion in addition to, as Caroline said, the idea of movement and liveliness and the mixture of exoticism which plays such a role is very important. The other comment I would just make that a lot of my work had to do with the use of museums as sources of design. The Met had a program for encouraging manufacturers to design not direct reproductions although people did that too but to use the collections as a source of design and certainly your discussion of the natural history museum as a source of design certainly plays into what was the use of the Ruhlman furniture for the company of master craftsmen and 18th century furniture for consumer use and this intense sense of moral rectitude that went with it. In other words dispensing good taste in a broader context. It could be modern but introducing people to the idea of what's going on in Europe or elsewhere by supporting trade and there's a great deal of interaction of trade in museums so we get the Macy's 28 exhibition and Robert DeForest, the president of the Metropolitan Museum writes the forward and has his two curators curating along with famous people. But to get back to the questions I would just wanted to see what for both of you what was the role of the press magazines and newspapers and how did the coverage differ for Jesse Franklin Turner or the other American fashion houses or individuals from the French designs being marketed either abroad or to an American market. Do you want to start, Jen? Of course the fashion magazines, Vogue and Harper's were incredibly influential and it seems to me that in the 20s Vogue was still somewhat of a social magazine would you agree with that, Caroline, at that point? And Jesse got very little coverage in Vogue there were those two pieces that I showed you and that was very early on 21 and 22 and then there was nothing at all until 1928 when suddenly the idea of the T-Gan burst onto the scene again and then there was more and it really picked up in the 30s and Harper's didn't report on her until 1932 so I think the fashion magazines were really became I would say more influential starting more in the 30s in terms of that cross fertilization. What do you think in terms of them? Yes, the major fashion magazines were extremely francophilic and a lot of people have said that that's because the editors all wanted to go to Europe all the time and so there was quite a bit of that but one of the nice things about the Internet is that after doing research in Paris magazine I mean Paris-oriented magazines all these years I've now found all these other publications that were directed at the American industry and there are things like code and suit review that don't sound as fun as Harper's Bazaar they didn't have air take covers but they did have so much information about the huge amount of people who were doing every aspect of manufacturing of course ready to wear essentially was invented here and was a giant business so there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people if not thousands who were involved and they just didn't get their credit by name in the 30s one of the things that happened that was kind of special is that publicity people like Eleanor Lambert came along and as they had clients like Adrian and Norell and Claire McCartle then the news starts to get out that these are American designs and it starts to be promoted as work by Americans but I think there's still a tendency to think that it all emanates from Paris especially that's a machine that got going in the 19th century and it has been supported by the French state all this time and there's just not much you can do about it when so much energy goes into saying this is the most perfect stuff ever I think it's you'd be interested in knowing that Jesse did not advertise at all for the first 10 years of her working she had the most I think inventive way of reaching her clients which was to send out handwritten notes to all of them several times a year telling them what was new, what was on offer in a very intimate tone said oh please do come in we've got something new to show you and we think you'd like it and every invitation was always different and it was on very expensive Gorham stationery Black Star and Frost stationery with tissue lining and it was all part of her persona so she didn't advertise until the so that whole time she was in that salon in 290 Park she wasn't advertising only until the depression things really got slow she started advertising so I think one of the themes that came out very strongly in both of your talks is this ability to shape and craft a very particular identity through fashion and that's something that we explored in great detail in the Jazz Age exhibition what does it say about you if you own a cocktail shaker in the shape of a zeppelin versus if you own a tea service that takes its shape and form an inspiration from a historical model so to Jan and Caroline I might ask what if anything do we know about Jesse Franklin Turner's self presentation and how did she dress and present herself publicly and to Caroline I'm interested for these both stage and screen actresses who are constantly shifting personas from project to project do we see any connection or relationship to what they chose to wear and did that fluctuate? This is a good question because Jesse herself was very reclusive and she never presented herself to her clients she I assume left it to the sales women to deal with the clients and there are very few photographs but she was no way a glamour pus she was behind the scenes maybe like V&A there are designers who are stars and then there are designers who are in the background and Jesse was definitely in the background she always wore a hat and it wasn't her her branding was all in the way she treated her clients in the consistency in her logo that she created in her three salons that she created all were had incredible color combinations and sort of an aura of well one was the Renaissance the other was sort of the aura of the Far East so it wasn't her own self that created the brand and persona but everything that she did I think in general most women fashion designers until you get to Chanel and Scaparole were either lady like or sort of decorous I mean they wore whatever the nice thing to wear was and a lot of them were not beauties by the time they had established a career that had lasted pretty long they got a little matronly but two things come to mind for Americans one is Elizabeth Hawes who was also starting out as a fashion designer in the 30s and she had gone to Vassar and she was very blue stocking and she got a lot of press and was always doing things like sitting on the floors in her dungarees holding her scissors or she really portrayed herself as anti fashion in a lot of ways and the other is Valentina who was of Russian origin and was quite quite beautiful she's known today primarily for having dressed garbo and for having shared him with her husband and a lot of garbo's early style came from Valentina I mean a lot of what she wore was directly influenced by but Valentina would never let anybody wear her clothes for her fashion shows in her couture salon and she spoke in charming broken English and she would say here for evening and sweep in with a cape and then remove it and say wait tie and whatnot and so she just put on a show for every single showing so I think we're saying that there was still a lot of individuality I think that a show of those three designers would be so interesting because they were the three major designers of the American designers of the 30s and they're so different they couldn't be more different and McCartle please put her in well I would I'm giving McCartle the 40s well she invented separates in the 30s but now we're talking we have to talk about the 20s getting back to Emily's point do you think the actresses picked designers because they were chic or because they actually saw in them something that they wanted with their brand that these stores and designers desperately wanted to dress as many actresses as possible and one thing you have to think of when you imagine going to a pretty simple play if you go to a simple play that today most of the people the women will be dressed kind of librarian style very neutral and in those in the heyday of the 1890s and through the 30s it was as if every single woman in a very regular play was wearing full blown Alexander McQueen or Gucci they were startlingly well dressed for no matter what kind of role they were playing and it was very much a part of promotion and there were a lot of magazines that were not fashion magazines they were theater magazine and what not that ran pictures of every single possible Ziegfeld girl and anyone who was in a play and I think it had just to get back to your original question nothing to do with personal actress style or the play itself it had to do with whether Bergdorf Goodman was dressing the person or another store or designer which is a bit different from the jewelry because in those days the people who made lots of money were in fact buying their own jewelry and making and really was a case of personal statement that they decided on rather than the company putting it on them for the Academy Awards or something anyway why don't we open it up to questions from the floor and wait for Suzanne to come because otherwise our feed won't reach people out of this right anyone have any questions yeah I have a question about the popularity of the American designers in Europe were they popular as much as the Europeans were popular over here were they advertised in Europe like the European not at all not at all no the only one was Mambo Shea who was from where is he from Chicago his real name was Maine Bacher and he started a couture house in Paris in the 30s but yeah there's very very very little I don't think it was really until after World War II that Europeans started buying designs and when the Paris couture houses decided finally to get involved and ready to wear they had to come here and learn learn how to do ready to wear because the all the techniques and machines and how to figure out how to create a pattern that was all here I was just going to add to that that's pretty typical of the furniture too we had the equivalent of ready to wear we had more machine made Macy's had a modern shop where they were copying but in simpler materials and drove the French designers crazy because essentially it was early knockoffs but the Americans throughout history have always understood the benefits of having some more mass production techniques in terms of sort of design and which obviously impacted the 30s usually because they were able to produce modern design at a lower price point Hi I wanted to know your thought on all the pictures you've shown in fashion almost every picture of somebody's wearing a hat a woman's wearing a hat and there's no mention upfront about hats and what the significance is and what your thoughts are on I thought it was interesting that you're talking about all the outfits and the lingerie and the lounge pants and no mention of hats so I was wondering what you Well a well-dressed woman would not go out of the house without a hat throughout I mean when she was put together for the day and we're not talking about when she's wearing a teagound of course but when she's put together for a day she's always wearing a hat and that was true right up until the 60s it began to change and that's when the hat gradually saw its demise but you just weren't dressed unless you wore a hat and gloves and stockings and high heels and no costume jewelry that's what being put together was I'm curious whether there was any triple trickle down effect of this fashion or was it just really the wealthy and the elite that wore it or the people in the street wearing and you know what was the influence you know the broader mass There was a lot of conformity the only real difference was in terms of quality and if you looked at a photograph that showed a hundred if you looked out at this audience almost everyone would be wearing just about the same thing but the haute couture ones would be made with better fabric and better fur and more embroidery and the ready to wear ones would be in the same styles but simpler and in general in this country there were new clothes and there were affordable clothes here so the styles were created in Paris and then the trickle down came and they were made ready to wear here but of course Chanel loved that she really promoted the idea of copying she thought it was the greatest compliment to have her clothes copied and her clothes could be easily copied and it didn't work so well so what's happened to style it's gone we're at a loss for words I think one of the other interesting I probably said but one of the other interesting things to me is that we see a lot of pictures in doing our research we went through furniture, vogue, all sorts of period publications and they're all in black and white and so the real was suddenly wow and we get out the textiles that we have in our collection and these incredible colors and we knew that it's colorful period but you really need to see the things in person to get this big wow factor and it's true of the clothes it's true of the furnishing textiles and it's true of all sorts of you know even the painting and the lacquering of furniture and I was interested what you said about the sort of silver leaf and so forth and the zigzag designs because that actually sounds just like the Donald Desky screen upstairs so again there's this crossover of ornament or rather color and line and pattern and form so I think that we think of you know it's hard from the period publications to get a sense of that but that's why we're very pleased to have so much of our collection and it's almost half there's I think 185 objects including the library out of 400 or just under 400 that are from Cooper Hewitt's collection so this is really an opportune moment to see great things that have not seen the light of day in a very long time but we hope we'll do so now and they certainly do so online and we have now the benefit of seeing all these patterns and styles and designs in color that we wouldn't have had in the 1920s and it would have been up to somebody's imagination to visualize the color I mean it was said to be chartreuse and black but you know the impact has got to be by a trip into the shop anyone else have any I just want to say about style because we all ask that what's happened I don't have any answer but I I think people the way our lives are now people just aren't as focused on clothing and not spending spending money on clothing the way we used to but style always remains I'm fascinated and rather love the way genes are being worn now and every pair of genes is individually styled by the cuts that are in them and I think people are expressing themselves quite a lot with just the cuts in genes and if you were to look at people on the street that seems to be what's happening and that is an expression of personal style so that's one of my thoughts people did were people really looking at the actresses to be in an aspirational way to dress like them to want to be like them in this period they were because there was so much press so you could read what they ate for dinner and how they played tennis or ping-pong and how they decorated and what they I mean a lot of it was fiction but it's still it's still there was this giant appetite especially as the depression came and everyone needed to be distracted and there was a whole machine providing all this information and here we have an expert to tell us the exact answer actually I'm going to ask you a question hopefully you won't throw your microphone when did wearing all black become so chic so I live on the upper side I see all of these women in various forms of black but it's almost funerial and it seems that they're very tailored and every garment is thoughtfully put together but it just seems very dour I always want to ask them did they just cut their fur? Subway, sorry I was screaming if you're taking a subway you can't wear light colors right or if you well they're the ones wearing the highest heels they're the more elegant they think they are the darker the clothing well there's a long history of black and how it's been used for morning and when women were in constant morning so it was pretty useful to have a black wardrobe and then in the 20s actually Coco Chanel was the one who made it kind of racy and sporty and new and it's so practical and so slimming that it will never go away sorry what is part of that not being pure and virginal and all of this so that part is really the 20s however what it means now and maybe you carry on like this right there are a lot of other things going into it anyway well thank you all for coming and this has been very fun for us