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As mentioned in this post, FIDM Museum staff are constantly engaged in collection-oriented research. Currently, Christina Johnson (Collections Manager) and Kevin Jones (Curator) are at the Fashion & Materiality symposium hosted by the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden. Click on the link above for more information on the conference and Read More »
Do you live in the Chicago area? Will you be traveling to Chicago before January 9, 2010? If so, you're in luck! The FIDM Museum Claire McCardell dresses seen in today's post are on exhibit in Chicago as part of the Learning Modern exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Sullivan Galleries. Read More »
High Style: Betsy Bloomingdale and the Haute CoutureOctober 21, 2009-December 13, 2009 We couldn't wait any longer to tell you about this exhibition! We hope that all of our readers will all be able to attend, but for those who are outside the Los Angeles area, we will be featuring a number of exhibition Read More »
Often called the "dictator of fashion," Charles Worth (1825-1895) was the preeminent fashion tastemaker of the mid to late nineteenth century. Born in rural England, Worth emigrated to Paris in 1845 and worked in a series of dry-goods and dressmaking establishments. In 1856 or 1857, Worth, in partnership with Swedish businessman Otto Bobergh, opened a dressmaking Read More »
If you're interested in the history of fashion, it is usually impossible to ignore the ways in which contemporary designers reference styles of past eras. As we mentioned in this post, designer John Galliano frequently mines fashion history for his inspiration, both in his own collections and in those he creates for Christian Dior. The Fall 2009 Galliano Read More »
Thanks to Heather of the dress studies blog Worn Through for her complimentary review of this blog! You can read the review here. Earlier this year, Worn Through featured an interview with our collections manager, Christina Johnson. You can read all three parts of that interview here. Read More »
"What must be admired most in Adrian's fashions is their construction; he is an architect, balancing proportions and studying every line. His approach is original and frequently unconventional, but that is what makes the viewing of an Adrian collection exciting."1 When Adrian decided to leave the world of costume design in 1941 and open Adrian Read More »
Now that you've been introduced to the FIDM Museum, you're probably wondering where and how we've acquired our objects. Museums acquire new objects in a variety of ways, but purchases, bequests and donations are the most common avenues by which objects find new homes in museum collections. Often, we have specific ideas as to what Read More »
Louella Ballerino? Who's that?Though you may not recognize her name, her design sensibility was crucial to the creation and popularization of the California look--casual, functional, colorful clothing designed to complement the relaxed California lifestyle. Her career began in 1929, when economic necessity led Ballerino to begin work as a free-lance fashion illustrator in Los Angeles. Read More »
When creating a collection, fashion designers typically mine multiple sources for their inspiration. This inspiration takes visual form on what is usually called a “mood board,” a group of visual references intended to guide the look and feel of a particular collection. These visual cues can be culled from literally anywhere, but often consist of Read More »
