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Mae West's (1893-1980) most famous attribute was her figure. Buxom, rounded and held in place by rigid corsets, West's silhouette provoked a degree of outrage, while also serving as her best publicity. Her hourglass shape was immortalized in 1937 when the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli used West's silhouette as the basis for her Shocking perfume bottle. 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 »
Because of our location in Los Angeles, the FIDM Museum is fortunate to house costumes from a variety of Hollywood films. Many of these costumes are associated with the early years of the film industry and were worn by stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Rudolph Valentino. You can look forward to seeing some of these 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 »
All devotees of home sewing should know these two names: Madame Demorest and Ebenezer Butterick. Madame Demorest, wife of a successful New York merchant, was the first pattern maven. In the 1850s, she began selling tissue-paper patterns for home sewers via mail order advertisements in fashion periodicals such as the Ladies Gazette and Godey's Lady's 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 »
British designer Vivienne Westwood (b.1941) began her fashion career in the early 1970s, just as the prevailing fashions began a shift towards the aggressive look of punk. Embracing a design sense that explored the possibilities of decay and destruction, punk was a challenge to the concept of clothing as a means to beautify the individual. Read More »
The FIDM Museum & Galleries and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences are proud to present the 4th Annual Outstanding Art of Television Costume Design Exhibition. Featured this year are costume designs from 14 different shows, including Gossip Girl, The Tudors, The L Word, Project Runway, Coco Chanel and Grey Gardens. Thanks to our Read More »
Portable Pets: Live and Apparently Live Animals in Fashion, 1880-1925 by Julia Long (former FIDM Museum Study Collection Manager) is published in the current issue of Costume, the journal of the Costume Society of Great Britain. Julia's article features this fine specimen of an apparently live animal, along with other objects from our collection. You Read More »
Today’s featured Study Collection ensemble highlights a type of dress most often associated with the Parisian designer Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946). Called a robe de style, the upper portion of the dress is slim and close-fitting, while the skirt is full and rather long. The fullness in the skirt is a result of built-in panniers at Read More »
Today, hats are worn primarily on celebratory or festive occasions, but in the 19th century, hats and bonnets were an essential element of every woman's wardrobe. Beginning in the 1890s and continuing until about 1915, many hats were extremely large and served as an ideal canvas on which to display a variety of trimmings, feathers included. Egret, Read More »
