Thursday, June 12, 2008

Ancient History


Look to your research books for the silhouettes showing up on the runways......the fez, popular in Turkey, atop a whirling dervish, has been part of popular culture for decades.  Those that know, will remember any lodge member of the 1950's wearing them.  In Bye, Bye Birdie, with Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh, the lodge members were after her in a number that had them whirling on their tables.  
Louis Vuitton showed them in the Fall 08 collections, as deconstruction: smooth bits of curves, whirling up into the air, or curving down over the model's foreheads.  
We'll see a rash of fezzes in the mags, to be sure, but I'm not sure if the average Joe or Jill will sport one with their Ralph Lauren tweeds. Ellen Christine does a crushed fez, last seen in "Tell Me On a Sunday", with Maxine Linehan, and we include a taupe one in our Fall 08 lookbook, with a smart burst of magenta on the upside.  Very  "The Women", you know.  So, back to history.......trace the shape from earlier years, to the Whirling Dervish of Turkey, onto the 1930's hats aplenty in cinematography and Haute Couture (here we need to reference Elsa Schiaparelli), and voila!  Fall o8, LV............how interesting is our world, n'est-ce pas?

2 comments:

Michelle Medley said...

Show us the Lookbook.

Can we see it online?

I'm feeling heady. I'm thinking "fez like old times."

Ellen Christine Couture said...

the Fall 08 style book will be up on MySpace in a few weeks.........thanks for your interest..........
heady is what I feel all the time!