A Fashionable Year

Arcadia and Annapurna collections, 1950–51

How fast is this year speeding by? Two months have nearly passed already. It’s frightening.

One of my sisters gave me a calendar for my birthday this year. I was a little anxious because I am very particular about my choice of calendar: printing quality and stock (paper) are as important to me as the images. I couldn’t go a whole year with some rubbishy 120gsm satin stock!

Fortunately my sister chose well: a calendar of the designer Charles Worth’s fashion illustrations from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. (The print quality is excellent.) The descriptive text says:

The House of Worth, established in Paris in 1858 by Charles Frederick Worth (1826–95), was the original and founding couture house. A large collection of Worth designs was donated to the V&A by the fashion house in 1956. This wall calendar brings together just a small selection of the 20,000 original designs and sketches, chiefly from the 1950s, now held in the Prints and Drawing department.

Cyclades collection, 1950–51

In fact, the House of Worth was taken over by the House of Paquin in 1950, and the Worth family influence ended with the retirement of Charles Worth’s great-grandson Jean-Charles in 1952. In 1956, the House shut down its couture operations. [Wikipedia]

The 1950s are my second least-favourite fashion periods (many of the fashions seem so restrictive and buttoned-up to me after the freedoms of the 1920s to 1940s). However, the fashion illustrations in themselves are quite beautiful and elegant: graceful with sweeping lines. The Grecian-inspired gowns on the January page are probably my favourite in the whole calendar.

I hope you have all been having an excellent start to 2016. Time, however, is marching on—don’t waste it!