When I saw Diana Vreeland's show for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The 10s, 20s, 30s, I felt a thrill I had not as a fashion photographer known before. A luxurious clothes-world had once existed (and not so long at that), apparently without concern for cost, where it seemed no material was too expensive to use, no amount of labor too dear to employ, no designer's fantasy too extravagant to realize.
For personal pleasure, I wanted to study these clothes on the ground glass of a camera, and as a practical matter the thought of making a book of the resulting pictures came to mind.
Irving Penn
IRVING PENN (1917-2009)
Vionnet Dress with Fan, 1977
Details
IRVING PENN (1917-2009)
Vionnet Dress with Fan, 1977
platinum-palladium print, flush-mounted on aluminum, printed 1978
signed, initialed, titled, dated, numbered '35/37', '1817', inscribed 'Merry Christmas with love to Pat 1979' in pencil, copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps (on the reverse of the flush-mount)
21 1/8 x 19 5/8in. (54 x 50.4cm.)
Vionnet Dress with Fan, 1977
platinum-palladium print, flush-mounted on aluminum, printed 1978
signed, initialed, titled, dated, numbered '35/37', '1817', inscribed 'Merry Christmas with love to Pat 1979' in pencil, copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps (on the reverse of the flush-mount)
21 1/8 x 19 5/8in. (54 x 50.4cm.)
Literature
Penn and Vreeland, Inventive Paris Clothes 1909-1939, The Viking Press, 1977, cover and p. 53; Szarkowski, Irving Penn, The Museum of Modern Art, 1984, pl. 123; Penn, Passage: A Work Record, Alfred A. Knopf Callaway, 1991, p. 215; Westerbeck, ed., Irving Penn: A Career in Photography, Art Institute of Chicago Little, Brown and Co., 1997, cat. no. 116, p. 183; Greenough, Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, National Gallery of Art Yale University Press, 2005, pl. 68
Further Details
Diana Vreeland evokes Madeleine Vionnet in her text to accompany Mr Penn's pictures: 'Hers was the spirit of a great artist. "Remember," she said, "I never made fashions, I never saw fashion, I don't know what fashion is. I made the clothes I believed in." And that was true, for Vionnet was not a trend setter. No one ever copied her - because no one ever could.' (Inventive Paris Clothes, p. 36)
This image presents 'An ice-blue crepe-back satin dinner dress, bias cut, with draped surplice line at the back ending in bow and streamers. A very snappy dress, the back and the skirt are draped to the body. (1925-26)'
This image presents 'An ice-blue crepe-back satin dinner dress, bias cut, with draped surplice line at the back ending in bow and streamers. A very snappy dress, the back and the skirt are draped to the body. (1925-26)'
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