#cheruit

Pochoir and Fashion Illustrations

This great big book from Thames & Hudson with gorgeous images explains the art of pochoir which was a stenciling technique that was borrowed from the Japanese and then used to create colorful and complex fashion illustrations in the 1910s by the French. April Calahan and Cassidy Zachary explain the technique and how it was accompanied by a shift in fashion plates. Once rather static, designed to show every detail of a gown, fashion illustrations became less literal, often more dynamic, and always more beautiful. The 1910s saw fashion move away from the pinched hourglass figure to something more svelte often with a higher waistline, or empire cut. This was the era of Paul Poiret who claimed to have been the first to give up on the corset. Dresses remained long but they would continue inching up off the floor.

You can see the new dynamism in the first two images. The spring image by George Barbier is called “Le Coup de vent” or a gust of wind which catches the blue and white dress. It was printed in 1914, and so was the image by Pierre Brissard of a green and black checked morning coat by Cheruit. “Cursed Wind” read the title. And yet the wind helps make the prints especially charming, as the breeze catches the skirts of the dress and the coat.  Then there is an earlier, more static image by Paul Iribe for Poiret from 1908, a dress trimmed with a rose which was the symbol of Poiret’s haute couture house.

The book is organized by the various publications, all of them aimed at a market of very wealthy women who could afford both the gowns and the cost of the publications. I spotted one of the featured volumes in the stacks at the University of Illinois library in Urbana-Champaign years ago and it was promptly confiscated by the librarian who sent if off to Special Collections. The scanner I was using could not even capture the subtle metallic tints used in the images.

George Barbier, You all behave, 1915.

Fashion designers, from left: 1. Paquin. 2. Doucet. 3. Beer. 4. Cheruit. 5. Martial et Armand. 6-7. Cheruit. 8. Premet. 9-10. Callot. 

George Barbier (French), né Georges Augustin Barbier, (1882-1932) was one of the great French illustrators of the early 20th century. (x).

Edward Steichen, Marion Morehouse wearing Cheruit, 1928