I’d
been looking forward to this for quite awhile – a presentation of 1920s evening
gowns at the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba. There had been a stab at a version
of this back in February during the Roaring Twenties Festival but Real Life
intervened and I was prevented from attending that showcase. Nothing was going
to stop me this time however, not even the weather.
The
day of the 16th of April dawned misty and cold: I had high hopes of
the fog lifting and the day becoming fine, but it wasn’t to be. Instead it got
colder and greyer until, shortly after lunch, the rain started. It didn’t let
up until almost nine o’clock that evening, after all of the festivities were
well over.
We
arrived shortly before the kick-off time of 6.00pm. As the fog thickened we
paused momentarily on the genteel front porch of the stately Carrington Hotel
and had a moment of regret that drinks on the verandah wasn’t going to be an
option. Inside the foyer, we deposited our umbrellas on top of the steadily
growing soggy pile, hoping that they would still be there when the event was
over. We obtained our tickets then scurried to the sumptuous lounge where a
roaring fireplace offered a delicious compromise to the verandah.
Unfortunately
we had just gotten settled when the commencement of festivities was announced
and we moved to the Grand Ballroom to take our seats.
The
focus of the evening was a talk about 1920s evening dresses, hosted by the
Embroiderers’ Guild of NSW with content provided by the Cavalcade of History and
Fashion Inc., a “museum without walls” that promotes the awareness of fashion
and history around the country at existing museums and other institutions.
Their collection of garments includes items, along with their individual
provenances, dating back as far as 1780. Before we could get stuck in to what
they had to offer however, we had to sit through some introductory material
provided by the Embroiderers’ Guild:
The
‘Guild has been around for the past 56 years and was set up by the
Embroiderers’ Guild of Great Britain in 1957. Their aim is to promote
embroidery in all of its forms by teaching and mentoring groups throughout the
state, offering advice to the general public and – most interestingly – to
preserve examples of the various types of work that best exemplify the highest
levels of the art-form. To this end, they have a resource centre in Concord
West in Sydney and the point of this evening’s show was to raise funds to help
pay for the upgrade of that facility. Amongst the many delights held in their
archive is – very pertinent to the evening’s theme – the Beatrice Russell
Collection of beaded evening bags and reticules from the ‘20s and ‘30s,
numbering 350 specimens. We were treated to some details of the inefficiencies
of the current clubhouse that our ticket prices would soon be rectifying,
which, in retrospect, were probably meant to be light-hearted in nature but
which actually turned out to be quietly horrifying to this audience of fabric
aficionados.
The
audience, speaking of it, was huge; far larger than I was expecting it to be.
Many of the attendees had come via their links to various local craft groups –
quilters, patchworkers, embroiderers (of course) and knitters. Most were “women
of a certain age” as the phrase would have it and all of them were dressed to
the nines, some in keeping with the theme of the night’s discussion. I was
expecting to be able to count the other male audience members on the fingers of
one head, but there were about five of us, as it turned out.
Given
the air of 'annual general meetingness' that the ladies of the Guild imparted
to the proceedings, the event felt like a gathering of the Country Women’s
Association, with pretensions. After the business was finished – including the
discussion of the raffle and the goods sale-table in the far corner, along with
the promise of tea and cake after the talk – Helen got up to get down to the
matter at hand.
(Her
name was Helen *squawk!* - the PA system backfired at this point and the
information was not reiterated, so ‘Helen’ it will have to be.)
Amazingly,
the Cavalcade of History and Fashion Inc. has been around for 51 years. They
may not be able to boast of the Tudor bed hangings that the Embroiderers’ Guild
can lay claim to, but they have some pretty amazing things in their collection,
as we were going to find out. Sadly, we were also going to find out the
limitations of being a “museum without walls”, and the necessity of having to
travel light to any venue.
Helen
gave an immediate impression of someone who knows her stuff: she spoke with
clear, clipped tones in an obviously educated accent. Unfortunately, if left to
talk for too long, it became apparent that there was a gulf between her
knowledge and the lecture notes with which she had been provided. I’m no snob,
but I feel that if you put yourself forward as an expert in the field of
fashion history, you need to know how to pronounce French words: Poirot is not
“Porrot” and chemise is not “tjemmiss”. And English words, also: an ‘epitome’
is not some weird device for trimming hair off books. While Helen spoke with
great authority, the audience was wincing along with her at every mispronunciation.
Fortunately,
there were the frocks to distract us. Here, we saw the drawback to being a
“museum without walls” (if you think I’m being heavy-handed with this phrase,
believe me when I say that, compared to Helen, my over-usage is mild). Not
being able to transport mannequins to display the dresses, the format devolved
into one where the ladies from the Guild paraded the garments along the aisles
on coat-hangers, allowing the seated gathering to ogle. Sadly for us, the
ladies were shy of too much attention and, if confronted by a press of faces
craning forward eagerly to examine stitches and beadwork, would twitch the
frock away and scurry into a dark corner where the attention levels were much
diminished. Attempts at camera shots resolved into this:
Or
this:
(And,
observing the strict regulation to not use my flash, these are among the better
shots I was able to obtain!)
Inevitably,
I decided to not take photos but just sit and watch as each garment was wafted
by. To give the Guild ladies the benefit of the doubt, they were told to “shimmy”
the dresses occasionally to show them at their best effect, but seriously, I
don’t think these frocks have twitched this much since the last time they had
champagne spilt on them.
Helen
talked us through the horrors of World War One and the emancipation of women
that followed; the effect that the art world – the Futurists, the DaDa-ists,
the Surrealists and the Modernists – had on fashion; and the impact of such
diverse cultural phenomena as the Turkey Trot, the invention of Rayon and the
Ballets Russes had upon what women wore. We discovered the wonders of
handkerchief points and floating squares and learned how to tell true tambour
beading from its imitators (If you can see chain-stitching on the reverse of
the fabric, it’s real). We duly absorbed our warning to never wash anything
that had been beaded with gelatin beads (they melt in the rinse cycle).
The
lecture was long on interesting details: much of it I already knew, but it was
good to re-visit in the presence of such gorgeous examples of the dressmakers’
art. Quite simply, the assembled pretties were beautiful, each one more
gob-smackingly detailed than the last. Queen of the evening was the “Mabel”
gown (all of the dresses are thus named, after their original owners): this was
a shimmering silk voile (“voyle”) hand-painted all over with butterflies,
stitched with metal thread and then beaded into a shimmy-explosion that was all
taste and allure, no matter how over-the-top that sentence sounds. It was great
to see beadwork riffing on the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb; or which was
echoing Russian Constructivist artworks: having the concrete examples right in
front of us, along with the personal histories of the owners of each dress,
made for some fascinating, (metaphorical) hands-on history.
None
of us won any of the raffle prizes afterwards. In protest, we eschewed tea and
cake (which no-one seemed able to find anyway) and left to have dinner at the
Savoy on Katoomba Street.
Over
dinner, we talked long on the shortcomings of the evening, wondering how hard
could it be to find models who could wear the gowns, thus showing them off to
their best effect? Or if mannequins could have been provided by the
Embroiderers’ Guild? Obviously, some of the frocks are quite delicate (not to
mention revealing – one of them looked like an empty coat-hanger when displayed,
it was so sheer), but surely, they would receive no rougher treatment than Pam
was dealing out with her Parkinsonian twitching? We decided to let it be,
figuring that greater minds than ours had already pondered long upon the
strictures of a “museum without walls”.
All-in-all,
it was a fun evening’s entertainment and the dresses were definitely worth it.
In closing, I would like to pass on the details of the Embroiderers’ Guild of
NSW, who are always willing to throw open their doors to researchers, given a
telephonic ‘heads-up’ in advance:
76 Queen Street
Concord West NSW 2138
(02)
9743 2501
If
fashion and the ‘Twenties are your thing, this is the place to go!
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