Feminism in the 1960’s into the 70’s called on women to step from the demure suburban post war housewife in her tight waisted dress and flared skirt into a new ideal of Beauty. Around the world women starting seeing themselves differently. They dreamed of a new reality where they would have much more freedom and took on positions in professions, corporations and in their own businesses that demanded attire that was clean cut without whimsy or frills. In the early 1970’s America brought to Europe a new look with interchangeable separates that could carry a woman from the office to the evening cocktail party.
However as early as 1960 the design house Céline in Paris catering to an elegant clientele had started making well cut skirts, trousers, jackets and blouses in ready to wear clothing that stressed fabric and cut. The dream of an upper middle class post war society was for far away places, a world made smaller because of easier air travel. Women lived out of suitcases but arriving in Paris, London or Milan they wanted to look chic and elegant.
I just found this skirt by Celine in Johanneburg, looking as fresh and timeless as when it was first made .
This fashion house was born of the dream of Parisian Céline Vipiana who believed a new society would emerge after the 2nd world war who would want luxury goods.
With help from her husband Robert, she opened a boutique in Paris,focusing on handbags and shoes. The Céline handbag into the present remains unique for its elegance, distinct classical look and craftsmanship. And women yearn for handbags – the handbag is like a jewel. It carries the dream of every woman of what she aspires to, who she would like to be , the image of an icon embedded in her mind. These are dreams that last forever.
The brand of Celine caters to an association of distinction and history. Recently the fashion house moved to a Neoclassical Mansion Hôtel Colbert de Torcy in Rue Vivienne in Paris.
It is also close to the Palais Royal where the French Royalty lived four hundred years ago.
When you step into the showrooms of this fashion house today its marble floors and staircase cant help but carry your mind to another era of grandeur.
Anyone who walks up those stairs today will think of how they are in the heart of a city that has breathed fashion as far back as the days of Louis XIV who revived all the luxury trades in France making Versailles a showcase for all that Paris could offer. It was Parisian designers who turned women into icons of their era, making their inner dreams of royalty be true in appearance even if they had failed in reality such as the Duchess of Windsor.
This is what clothes do to us. They transform us from who we think we are to someone else that the brand identity carries with it. The choice of showroom in an age where so many fashion designers fight to keep names is essential to weaving dreams into our clothes.
Clothes are an art just as much as any other art form, and just as art has the ability to show us a reality we do not know, clothes too can take us from the present into a different era. Perhaps that is why Vintage clothes have such an allure.
I bought the 70s skirt I found in Johannesburg because it made me think of Paris. It made me feel as I put it on that I was on Rue Vivienne. That I was standing in the entrance way of the famous covered boulevard on that street which is one of the secret shopping passageways of Paris.
I thought of being inside standing on the mosaic floor designed in the 19th Century in what was then the location for the most celebrated and desired boutiques of Paris.
All of that has changed and the boutiques and grand fashion houses have moved elsewhere because after 1871 Paris changed to a city of wide streets and boulevards. However it still has is secrets and whether you dream of them when you put on its fashions or when you take them off, it holds a picture of being someone other than who you are.
artstolife 