Excuse Me, Is My Canvas Showing?

Recently I put together a presentation called Gender, Art, and Fashion for a “Meet the Designer” forum. Art has long been an influencer of fashion; a muse if you will, for designers since at least the 19^th century when Oscar Wilde first uttered, “One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.” Like other designing entrepreneurs, I too found inspiration in art; in fact, it’s the very impetus of my current line of designer tees, Meliciously Yours. I’ll share some snippets from the presentation in this blog, and slide show link is below for anyone interested.

I have an English degree and am a lover of all things Victorian. The influences behind the designer tees are a culmination of the gender roles, art, literature, and the sisterhood of that era. While there were so many occupational and societal limitations for women, there were qualities for them to be proud of, things missing in our own "polite society": manners, civility, and femininity. Quite simply: ladies were ladies! So my mission for the Meliciously Yours brand was to marry Victorian femininity with a touch of modern day feminism.

My first designer tee, Free, was inspired by the idea of oppression of women as symbolized through the use of bird cages in Victorian art. Basically in a painting if there was a young girl or a young woman and a bird cage, the bird is locked in the cage. It was meant to represent oppression, women as “kept” objects, or virginity.

One such work of art is Sir John Everett Millais’s “Waking” also known as “Just Awake”. A young girl is awakened by the song bird at which she stares in wonderment, questioning. Her awakening was meant to be meaningful, not only to her but to the Victorian viewer as well.

Another popular theme in Victorian art was that of beauty. The Victorians placed a great deal of worth in outward appearances. The general creed in polite Victorian society was that women and children should be seen and not heard. For the most part women in the Victorian era were denied formal educations. Very few young ladies went to what could be described as a school, although most of them were home schooled. The basis of their education was religious study and girls learned to play a musical instrument and to sing.

In the painting, “The Spinet” (1902), Thomas Wilmer Dewing shows us a young, chaste woman practicing her piano. Notice the mirror above her. This theme is one of the inspirations behind my Beauty and Brains designer tee. It’s a replica of a Victorian scale – balanced right down the middle with Beauty on one side and Brains on the other, meant to remind women they can be pretty and smart.

Literature was also a go-to source for my design concepts. In the Victorian novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, one of the characters, Bertha, is the model of the “crazy lady in the attic’. She is described as sexual, unchaste and rebellious and refuses to conform to codes of feminine behavior and as a result she is locked away, condemned as ‘mad’. In that era women were not allowed to enjoy sexual satisfaction –it was the belief that women had no need for sexual gratification. In fact, the Victorians believed passion to be deviant behavior and that even thoughts of sexuality would cause insanity in women! Women weren’t allowed to adorn themselves with a lot of make up or perfumes – anything that would suggest passion. This theme influenced our designer tee, Sensuous with the ornate, hand-illustrated Victorian style perfume bottles.

These are just a few of the inspirations behind the Melicously Yours designer tees. Feel free to view my presentation Gender, Art, and Fashion.

Disclaimer: I am not an art historian or an academic on any level, but a lover and appreciator of art and history. My perceptions and interpretations of works of art and literature are just that. I encourage everyone not to be intimidated by art and to view, enjoy, and embrace it on their own level.

Fun Fashion Facts…

In the early 1900’s French press used fine artists to illustrate their fashion magazines, and you don’t have to go back that far here in America when Andy Warhol began his career illustrating shoes and fashion for Glamour, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar magazines in the early 1950’s.

"I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?"

--Andy Warhol