Art Nouveau: Clothing and jewelery

Fashion

Men's clothing differed little from preceding periods, although a trend towards less formality continued. A square silhouette, broad, padded shoulders and straight body was typical. New inventions like the zipper found their way into fashion. Women's clothing softened, sleeves became more modest, and a soft, triangular silhouette developed. Later the triangular skirt became cylindrical, producing a narrow, rectangular silhouette. Bodices and skirts were more commonly combined into one-piece dresses, and lighter construction was used. Tailored looks became more popular. Top fashion designers such as Paul Poiret experimented with unusual silhouettes. Soft fabrics like crepe, charmeuse, chiffon, and batiste were popular for tea dresses and evening gowns. Dresses made of lace, or embroidered cotton combined with lace, were fashionable for warm weather. Firmer fabrics such as wool and cotton duck were used for tailored wear.

The art nouveau “look” was at the cutting edge of modern style. Only the most fashionable wore it in its fullest manifestation, while others preferred moderated versions. These styles were spread internationally through fashion journals, such as Les Modes and down through middle-class oriented magazines such as The Ladies Field and La Mode illustrée. Les Modes of July 1902 featured, for example, an art nouveau ball dress by Maggy Rouff with full-length swirls in silver and diamante, on a straw-colored silk ground trimmed with alençon lace.

From 1895 all the top twenty or so Paris salons were developing art nouveau fashions, from the House of Worth (whose designer was by then Jean-Philippe Worth) through the salons of Doucet, Maggy Rouff, Jeanne Paquin, and Laferriere to cite just a few. They launched season after season of art nouveau-styled garments on to the international fashion market. Examples survive in the great fashion collections of museums in Paris and the United States.

Maggy Rouff

Maggy modelling one of her own designs

La Maison Maggy Rouff was one of the great fashion houses, from 1929 to its closure in 1979 . Maggy Rouff nicknamed "the architect of fashion" liked to play on asymmetry. The perfection of his technique from his medical studies, earned him the admiration of his peers and commercial success. After his death in 1971, the House Maggy Rouff perpetuated its innovative designs and colorful prints. Its history and the richness of its range, Maggy Rouff still experiencing a strong reputation in France and abroad.

Jeanne Paquin

Born in Saint-Denis in 1869, Paquin trained as a dressmaker at Rouff and later opened her own fashion house in 1891. The Maison Paquin quickly became known for its eighteenth century-inspired pastel evening dresses and tailored day dresses, as well as for its numerous publicity stunts, including organizing fashion parades to promote her new models and sending her models to operas and races in order to show off her designs. Paquin also frequently collaborated with the illustrators and architects Leon Bakst, George Barbier, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and Louis Süe for the creation of stage costumes, the publication of dress albums and the decoration of her private residences, reinforcing her reputation as a thoroughly modern designer. Beginning in 1912, the her fashions were attractively illustrated in the fashion magazine La Gazette du Bon Ton


Jewelry

In the 1890s, jewellers began to explore the potential of the growing Art Nouveau style and the closely related German, British (and to some extent American) Arts and Crafts Movement.

Art Nouveau jewellery encompassed many distinct features including a focus on the female form and an emphasis on colour, most commonly rendered through the use of enamelling techniques including basse-taille, champleve, cloisonné, and plique-à-jour. Motifs included orchids, irises, pansies, vines, swans, peacocks, snakes, dragonflies, mythological creatures, and the female silhouette.

René Lalique, working for the Paris shop of Samuel Bing, was recognised by contemporaries as a leading figure in this trend. The Darmstadt Artists' Colony and Wiener Werkstätte provided perhaps the most significant German input to the trend, while in Denmark Georg Jensen, though best known for his Silverware, also contributed significant pieces. In England, Liberty & Co. and the British arts & crafts movement of Charles Robert Ashbee contributed slightly more linear but still characteristic designs. The new style moved the focus of the jeweller's art from the setting of stones to the artistic design of the piece itself. Lalique's dragonfly design is one of the best examples of this. Enamels played a large role in technique, while sinuous organic lines are the most recognisable design feature.

Glass making was a domain where art nouveau found a great expression – as example we have the works off Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York, Emile Galle and the Daum brothers in Nancy, France and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow.