The Library of Style

(The Twitter thread is probably easier to read and easier to look at the images, but I wanted to make sure it got preserved. Images are the tweets.)

I’m not up to date in couture but if we’re on the cusp of that coming into style, the trickle-down to bargain fashion is a few years away? Alas.

I humbly request an image post of your top ten picks

Oh man, it's hard to narrow it down that much, but here are 10 Really Good ones. I shall restrict myself to the ones that are squared off across the bottom, and only ones that are sewn up and more or less intact.

Silk, c. 1795, Cooper Hewitt collection.

This one is made of satin with a net overlay, and if you zoom in you can see the net is made of teeny tiny little ribbons all hand knotted together. Wonderful! I've seen this kind of netting in a few dresses and purses, and some much finer lace netting used on waistcoats, but this is the only example I've seen of this kind of fairly large handmade net on menswear. The edges have a binding, which is a nice way to finish them off, and it's got lovely little death's head buttons. It doesn't have pockets, which is very unusual for an 18th century waistcoat, but which I think was the right choice in this case.

Silk, c. 1780's according to The Met but with that high collar I'd put it more 90's.

Look at those appliqué velvet triangles! I love them!! All the dark bits are embroidery and tiny metal spangles, which have tarnished but would have originally been silver and very sparkly.

Silk, c. 1780's, Cooper Hewitt.

There are plenty of weirder embroidery designs from the era (I have a whole pinterest board for them) but I'm just so fascinated by the choice to put all these bizarre fish on here, along with a mixture of chenille seaweed and normal land flowers. It's in pretty rough shape, but when it was new the colours would have been brighter, and there were more black lines and whiskers on the fish.

Also silk, c. 1780's, and in the Cooper Hewitt collection.

Lookit all the bugs!! There are multiple other bug embroidered waistcoats on the aforementioned pinterest board, but this one has an especially nice layout.

This one was posted in a facebook group, so all I know is that it was photographed at an exhibition in Bilbao, but I'm going to guess it's also silk and 1780's.

It's just.. sublime. I love the tone on tone embroidery and the way the tree branches up to cover the whole thing in leaves, and the fringe around the edges. I'm not a huge fan of fringe in a lot of cases, but I think it works here. There's also a monkey swinging from the tree, and it looks like there are some metal spangles on the trunk.

Silk, Cooper Hewitt collection.

This one is printed to shape! It's got all these funky little neoclassical designs which they engraved into a metal plate and then printed right onto the fabric!! It's far from the only example, and some other waistcoats have similar little oval shaped printed scenes that are sewn on and mixed with embroidery.

Silk, 1780's, V&A museum.

Aesthetically this isn't really one of my favourites, but you've got to admire it for the strips of green rabbit fur. It's also got some tarnished silver spangles that would have originally been sparklier, and I love the contrasting velvet lapels.

Wool shag, c. 1790.

Isn't it awful? I love it! It looks like someone skinned Elmo and made him into a waistcoat. You sometimes see this kind of thick piled fabric woven from silk or wool, and sometimes it's used for the outer fabric and sometimes for linings or facings. Most of the ones I've seen are more restrained than this.

Silk, Abiti del Passato. This one might be 1800's instead of 1790's, but I'm counting it anyways.

At first glance you think "oh neat, ikat, I've not seen very many examples at all of ikat used in 18th century menswear" but no! If you look at the closeup you'll see that instead of warp dyed threads, it's actually embroidered to look like warp dyed threads! (The post about ikat I linked to has some technical difficulties that messed up the punctuation somehow, and some of the pictures won't load, but it's still a good post)

I can only assume that this was made because someone couldn't afford the expensive imported fabric, and did their best to imitate it with what was more readily available.

Museo del Traje but I cannot get the damn source link to work and can't find it on the website. It's also probably silk and 1780's-90's.

I mentioned that some waistcoats have little appliqué bits with printed pictures on them, and this is one of those. I've seen very few examples of this weird lapel shape, and I can't recall ever seeing another diagonal band like that. It's strange to see such asymmetrically sized lapels, but somehow it works.

Ok, that's 10! There are plenty more beautiful and interesting ones that I don't have room for here, even without getting into earlier styles and ones on portraits and fashion plates (like that one triple breasted one).

This is Kodachrome in 1949, It doesn’t say the format, but considering its not blurry with all the moving objects it’s not a large format view camera (which have slow lenses and are not for action shots) It could be a 6 by 6 medium format but it’s not square, it probably is 35mm. I don’t think it’s Kodachrome because of the contrast and the saturation of the colours. 

Then Kodacolor X was invented in the 1950′s as a mean to make colour photography available for the general public, before that you could only get colour by using slide film which was much more expensive than B&W so it was used mainly by professional photographers. Kodacolor X is what is known as a Colour print film, it produces a negative, which is only viewable after printing it, and it’s way more cheaper than slides, but still even those “amateur” films can get pretty nice results for example: 

1968, it’s square so probably is a Rolleiflex TLR or other 6 by 6 camera. so not really a fair comparison, then maybe this one: 

I’m also slightly puzzled by the claims that modern digital tech is so much better than older tech. The truth is, digital imaging has been trying to equal film since the very first blocky images. We’ve had the megapixel race and now we’re in the dynamic bandwidth race. I took the below shot with a (then) very expensive digital camera and prime lens: 

But I was still trying to re-create the look of classic film photography, the warmth and colour gamut. 

These photos were taken in 1969 for LIFE Magazine by professional photographer Arthur Schatz, many (but not all) at Beverly Hills High School in Southern California. Time Magazine ran a retrospective of the photo series a few years ago called Feelin’ Groovy: High School Fashion, 1969.

The girl in the headband is named Rosemary Shoong, and she apparently made the outfit herself (that being said, it’s described here as a “leather Indian dress” by which they mean Native, and I’m not sure if she herself was part native or not, so it may or not be appropriated). A few of the other girls are named, but not all of them. 

My favourite image though, isn’t of one of the students, but rather of the teacher, Sandy Brockman: 

That outfit. That headband.

ICONIC.

Which nearly obscures the odd striping mismatch on the jacket Kang Dong Won wears. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m also not sure I dislike it.

While not very business-like, a playful pinstripe like that would be perfect for (like here) and entertainer who had to dress up but didn’t want to go full salaryman.

Wintry walks with dogs on beaches are a perfect occasion for these coats. Wear the third, which has no merit in form, when it’s absolutely disgusting out, because you have a dog who needs to go out.