Music From A Farther Room

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter repented, changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing, and then seeing again.

This is what I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.

Lillian Hellman - Pentimento

All that's to come, and all that could have been...
Note to self

Note to self

fashioninhistory: “Swan” Evening Dress Charles James 1951  Borrowing from the Victorians, James interpreted the 1870s bustle dress in construction, form, and decoration to render his swan silhouette. A hollow, double-lobed understructure at back corresponding to a divided type of period bustle and similar foundations over the hips extend the figure beyond the natural form. Like the bustle, bisecting the back emphasizes the round forms of the buttocks and at the same time suggests the back of a swan, with wings folded gracefully on its back. The apron-front drapery is also a borrowing from 1870s styles. This dress is a shorter version of James’ full-length “Swan” ball gown that was immortalized in a Cecil Beaton photograph of Nancy James posing by light-filled Pellon-covered windows in the James showroom.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art

fashioninhistory:

“Swan” Evening Dress

Charles James

1951 

Borrowing from the Victorians, James interpreted the 1870s bustle dress in construction, form, and decoration to render his swan silhouette. A hollow, double-lobed understructure at back corresponding to a divided type of period bustle and similar foundations over the hips extend the figure beyond the natural form. Like the bustle, bisecting the back emphasizes the round forms of the buttocks and at the same time suggests the back of a swan, with wings folded gracefully on its back. The apron-front drapery is also a borrowing from 1870s styles. This dress is a shorter version of James’ full-length “Swan” ball gown that was immortalized in a Cecil Beaton photograph of Nancy James posing by light-filled Pellon-covered windows in the James showroom.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art