"Here is a famous example from Jean Paul Gaultier of a couture striped dress with ostridge feathers at the hem."
"Amy Miller, the exhibition’s curator, has identified the cultural
cross-currents, adding a section on "subversion and rebellion." As
examples, she used Yves Saint Laurent’s androgynous 1962 peacoat."
" "Gender and sexuality" encompasses Chanel’s Breton matelot sweater and
pants as an early feminist look. The photo of Coco Chanel at "La Pausa"
with her dog, Gigot, exemplifies this tradition."
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"The sailor looks that Antonio Marras has produced recently for Kenzo seem at first like caricatures – yet they are imbued with his own experience of living close to the sea in Sardinia."
"Vivienne Westwood’s new romantic pirate outfit."
Granted, it wouldn’t be the first place that I would look for a dose of fashion history, but thank goodness the IHT’s Susy Menkes is on top of things. London’s National Maritime Museum’s exhibition gives a lovely look at the history of how all things nautica have made quite a splash in the world of fashion design.
London exhibit charts a history of sailor chic
GREENWICH, England: He stands four square to the ocean and the big blue sky: hat cocked above sailor collar, buttons bold on wide-legged pants.
Is it Admiral Horatio Nelson, the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, whose swashbuckling hat survived when he fell? No, it’s the pint-size outfit created for a 4-year-old prince — who launched nautical style for generations of long-suffering little boys.
The wave of seafaring fashion, from Coco Chanel’s sun-kissed, seashore elegance to Jean Paul Gaultier’s subversive gay pride, is the subject of "Sailor Chic — Fashion’s Love Affair with the Sea," which opens on Wednesday at London’s National Maritime Museum.
It starts with the trim cotton sailor suit that Queen Victoria ordered in 1856 for her son, the future King Edward VII, immortalized in a sugar-sweet portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter — and at a more kitsch cultural level in the Minton china plates and jugs that sold this idea of kiddy sailor style to the people.
Even then, there was something ham about the "little boy blue." Victoria’s diary entry reads: "Bertie put on his sailor’s dress, which was beautifully made by the man on board who makes for our sailors. When he appeared, the officers and sailors who were all assembled on deck to see him, cheered, and seemed delighted."
