ON PINS AND NEEDLES

Last week we shared with you Landis Lee’s research on Edward Linley Sambourne, who may have been the original street fashion photographer. This week, on the same topic, here is another fascinating post by one of our students.

By Kathryn Squitieri

While most people think of “street” fashion photography as a phenomenon of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in reality, the practice began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the same time that fashion photography in general was beginning to be used to spread fashion news in the media. Periodicals during this time, particularly French ones like Les Modes and Femina, started featuring photos of fashionable women at society events, such as horseraces and garden parties, as a supplement to their stiff studio photographs of models or actresses posed in the latest couture designs. A few years later, around 1905, American magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar began publishing photos of “real” fashion as well, mostly taken at the French races at Longchamp, Auteuil and Chantilly.

Unknown Photographer, Toilettes á Auteuil, June 19, 1911, Image Collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

The various events throughout the racing season were considered the most important places to witness fashionable society women wearing the latest couture gowns. In fact, couturiers often sent their models wearing new designs to mingle with the fashionable crowd and hopefully attract new clientele. The models can usually be recognized by their slim, elegant figures, their youth, and their characteristic poses in photographs, while the “real” women often have figure flaws and may look unsure of themselves if they know they are being photographed.[1] Besides the professional models who were paid by the day, there were other women known as “fashionables” who modeled the clothes. These were well-known society personalities who received deep discounts on their purchases from couture houses if they wore the latest models to important society events, such as horse races.[2]

The racecourses in Paris opened their season in mid-February and closed in mid-July. The most important event, as far as fashion was concerned, took place at the end of June with Grand Prix Sunday at the racecourse Longchamp.[3] That day was “when new fashion trends were established, when couturiers and fashionables observed a pause and agreed on what would be worn the coming year,”[4] writes Xavier Demange. A contemporary source also states the importance of Longchamp:

The day par excellence, the day of days, to every pretty woman, of every class, was that known as Longchamp…the day of Fashion’s great review, when all her battalions were marshaled in array. It was the pet festival of the most elegant section of society, male and female, of all lovers of novelty, and of every idler in Paris. The smart folk went to Longchamp to show off their fine clothes and carriages and prancing horses; the rest went to….speak ill of their neighbours, a practice which has always been in fashion…Longchamp was the great fancy fair, whither every fair Parisian took herself, to draw inspiration for her new gowns, and dream of their perfections.[5]

Being arguably the most important day of Paris fashion of the year, fashion magazines all over the world were required to cover it in order to give women the news of Parisian taste. The periodical Les Modes dedicated their July and August issues from 1903 until the First World War to summer fashions seen at the races. These photos were mostly taken by an obscure photographer known as Edmond Cordonnier, who seems to have specialized in outdoor photography, and who Xavier Demange credits as the first person to take trackside fashion photographs in 1901 or 1902.[6] These unposed photographs were even used for covers  at a time when magazine covers featured illustrations.

Edmond Cordonnier, Toilettes Vues Aux Courses, 1904, Les Modes, July 1904.

Vogue also covered fashion at the Paris races, mostly using illustrations of the latest modes seen at the racetrack combined with descriptions of the garments. The periodical does not appear to have used photographs for these stories until after 1908. The editorials proclaimed that not only were the fashions seen at Longchamp the culmination of what was fashionable that summer, but hinted at what was to be fashionable that Autumn. A fashion editorial in the June 1, 1914 issue of Vogue proclaimed “If it’s at Longchamp, it’s new; If it’s new, it’s at Longchamp”

“Fashion: Seen at Longchamp,” Vogue, June 1, 1914, 49.

Besides the pioneering Edmond Cordonnier, the Séeberger brothers took fashion photographs of women attending the French races beginning in 1909. The brothers Jules, Henri and Louis Séeberger dedicated themselves to recording society events where the latest haute couture garments were worn. They expanded beyond the racetrack, capturing fashion at holiday resorts and beachside towns where the fashionable would travel to once racing season was over. Their first business stationary read “High-Fashion Snapshots: Photographic Accounts of Parisian Style.”[7] Unlike Cordonnier, who seems to have only worked for Les Modes, the Séeberger brothers sold their photographs to many periodicals, including several published outside of France which included Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and the Ladies Home Journal, although most are featured after 1917.

Fashion stories that featured photos of “real” society women and their clothes proved quite successful in Europe and America. Perhaps this is because women were interested in seeing not just what couture houses were imposing on the upper class, but what they were actually wearing. Outdoor photographs also provided the perfect background for the fashionable lingerie dresses that were worn at the turn of the twentieth century. The green grass offset the trains of the white gowns, and wind gave the gowns movement, bringing the fashions to life and likely making them even more desirable. The reader of the fashion magazine also had the chance to see how the dress was accessorized by the woman wearing it. Not only did they see the latest gowns, but they were shown the correct shoes, gloves, parasol, hat, belt, and even stockings that most complimented the dress.

While candid photos of fashionable women were published in fashion magazines, there are many existing examples that were taken by hobbyists or art photographers that were interested in fashion, women, or society in general but did not necessarily consider themselves fashion photographers. Jacques Henri Lartigue, Paul Martin, and Edward Linley Sambourne are three photographers who fit this description. Their photographs tell us a lot about fashion and what women were really wearing around the turn of the twentieth century, but their photographs were not seen in contemporary fashion magazines.

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) was born in Courbevoie, near Paris, France to a wealthy family. His father bought him his own camera when he was only seven years old, and he began to take photographs, mostly of his family and his daily life.[8] In his teenage years, however, he became interested in women and began to photograph them out on the street as they walked by. He wrote in his diary, “Women…everything about them fascinates me—their dresses, their scent, the way they walk, the makeup on their faces, their hands full of rings and, above all, their hats.”[9] He described his process of capturing fashionable women: “The [Avenue des] Acacias has three lanes… [including] one for pedestrians. People call this third lane the ‘Path of Virtue.’ And that’s where I am…with my camera….ready for action the moment I see someone really elegant coming along. She: the well-dressed, fashionable, eccentric, elegant, ridiculous or beautiful woman I’m waiting for. ”[10] Lartigue also attended the racetrack in search of fashionable women to photograph . He wrote of one experience: “It is the afternoon of the Grand Prix horse races at Longchamp…Here, nobody seems to mind my taking photographs; on the contrary, the ladies sometimes stand still and pose for me. There are lots of elegant umbrellas around and, as always, amusing dresses…and enormous, beautiful, ridiculous hats.”[11] This quotation suggests that the stylish women at the racetrack were used to being photographed, and even desired to be captured on film, which even further reinforces how important it was for society women to look elegant and be seen at Longchamp and other horseraces. Throughout the nineteen-teens, Lartigue photographed fashionable Paris women out and about on the streets and at the racetrack, capturing the much-desired look of the French elite. However, his photographs have rarely been studied as a source of fashion, and he himself considered his work to be art photography rather than fashion photography.

Jacques Henri Lartigue, Along the Bois de Boulogne, Early 1910s, Reproduced in Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Diary of a Century. New York: Viking Press, 1970.

Jacques Henri Lartigue, At the Auteuil Races, 1912, Reproduced in Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Diary of a Century. New York: Viking Press, 1970.

Paul Martin was born on April 16, 1864 in Herbeuville, France, but made his life in London, England after his parents moved the family there to escape the hardships of the Franco-Prussian War. He worked as a woodcut illustrator, taking up photography as a hobby to aid in his creation of engravings.[12] He began photographing people secretly in 1892, when he purchased a camera known as Fallowfield’s Facile Hand Camera. Advertisements of the camera explained how it could be disguised in a wrapping of brown paper, making it look like a parcel, possibly containing a book or two, wrapped by a shopkeeper.[13] Without the hindrance of a tripod, and with the camera’s ability to take twelve shots before it needed to be refilled with plates, Martin was able to take his street photographs with extreme discretion. The neighborhood he lived in was poor and run down, so most of his photographs are of working class people. However, he did take his Facile camera on holiday trips to Boulogne, Paris and Yarmouth, where he captured fashionable fellow vacationers on film. The result is an incredibly relaxed, natural look that shows us with the least amount of artifice how clothes were being worn during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His photographs of women on the beach or the boardwalk, are particularly telling of casual attire and sportswear. 

Paul Martin, Girls in Cycling Bloomers on the Quay in Boulogne, 1897, Reproduced in Roy Flukinger et al. Paul Martin: Victorian Photographer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.

Street-style photography from the turn of the twentieth century tells a truer story about how clothes were worn than can be discovered by looking at studio portraits from the same period. Fashion was captured by artists and hobby photographers, as well as professionals like Edmond Cordonnier or the Seéberger brothers who were paid to capture society women dressed in the newest and most exciting styles for fashion magazines. The most telling photographs, however, are the ones that were taken secretively on the streets, without the subjects knowing they were being photographed, making them look relaxed, more casual, and as a result, not unlike women photographed by Bill Cunningham today.

By Landis Lee

Today when street fashion photography is mentioned, photographers such as Bill Cunningham of the New York Times or Scott Schuman of the blog  The Sartorialist, may come to mind. Their photographs capture seemingly regular people walking the streets of major cities around the world in their own clothes that have been deemed fashionable and/or photo-worthy by the photographer.  The aim of street fashion photography is to capture what “regular people,” going about their day are wearing, un-staged (to a certain extent), rather than fashion photography that is staged and is meant to show a particular fashion in a particular way. Roland Barthes addresses “the pose” in his book Camera Lucida, asserting that when a person knows they are being photographed, they transform themselves and their bodies by posing to create a certain image.  They are posing to convey or promote their true self, but are in fact creating an image to show a “real” image.[1]

One photographer who captured street fashion truly did photograph his subjects with them (for the most part), wholly unaware they were being photographed, by use of a hidden camera.  This sly photographer was Edward Linley Sambourne.  He was not a twenty-first century photographer, and was in fact barely a twentieth century photographer (he died in 1910), making his photographs, which date to 1906-1908, the earliest known example of street fashion photography.  Sambourne’s photographs provide evidence that street fashion was captured as early as the turn of the twentieth century.

He was born in England in 1844.  He made his living as an artist and is most notably known for his drawings and cartoons in Punch magazine, where he eventually became a full-time artist.  At times Sambourne would have creative blocks with his drawing and found it difficult to capture the true likeness of the human figure.  In the 1880s, he found a solution for this through photography.  He had already started to use photographs taken by friends for him or ones available commercially.  However, by the 1880s photography had become an affordable pastime.

Sambourne would have certain models, his children, relatives, and domestic staff pose for him “sometimes wearing costumes borrowed from artist friends or from an agency, and would then use the prints as guides for his drawing.”[2]  If models were not available “and he needed a policeman, a brewer’s drayman, or a working man throwing a brick during a riot” he would find an original.[3]

All of these photographs are interesting to fashion history, but one in particular in this group of young women shows the woman walking away from the camera offering a complete back view of her outfit.  Back views of garments are rarely seen in fashion photography/plates.  Her long braid is visible hanging down to her waist and the ruffle of the skirt made by walking shows just a glimpse of the hem of her petticoat.  She is also carrying a handbag and wearing an outfit very similar to the woman reading and walking.  As evident in these photographs, women were beginning to carry handbags as an everyday accessory, just as they do today.

Many of these women are wearing dresses with short hems that expose the shoe or boot and stockings.  Dresses with shorter hems were easier to walk in, but not all dress hems were short.  Sambourne took some fantastic photographs of women walking while holding up their skirts, providing evidence of how women managed their long skirts in the streets.  This allows their wonderful shoes and boots to show, these rarely seen under the long skirts.

Sambourne also captured some wonderful photographs of families with children, offering a view of children and teenagers’ fashion.  The picture below shows a Parisian family out for a promenade.  The young lady in the foreground is probably in her early teens given the length of her skirt.  The rest of her outfit, including her hat, all resemble adult fashion, but an adult woman would not be wearing a skirt that short, making her outfit transitory, signaling her transition from childhood to adulthood.  The child at the right is much younger and wearing distinctly children’s clothes.

Some truly remarkable photographs were taken by Sambourne in late summer of 1906 at the English coast. The photographs below show women in typical bathing attire for the time period.  In one photograph a woman has just emerged from the water with her outfit soaking wet and clinging to her body, revealing her shape underneath.  This was a cheeky picture for Sambourne to take, and if she knew she was being photographed, she probably would not have been too happy with him!  Another great thing about these bathing photographs is the presence of the bathing machine.  Women would enter these wooden boxes on wheels and then be wheeled into the water, minimizing public view of them in their bathing outfits.

Edward Linley Sambourne has left behind many wonderful photographs of early twentieth century street fashion.  These photographs are gifts to fashion historians and anyone interested in early twentieth century fashion.  Fashion photography and fashion plates from this time period are wonderful resources for styles of clothing worn, but with them often comes doubt of authenticity.  Were women actually wearing this fashion?  Were they wearing this fashion in this exact style?  Has the photographer taken any artistic liberties with the photograph?

Sambourne has given us evidence of what women were indeed wearing on the streets of Paris and London and at the seashore in 1906-1908.  Different styles, fashions, and ages are represented in his photographs.  Much like what is seen in street fashion photography today.  The clothes are taken out of magazines, editorial spreads, and advertisements, shown on the streets on “real” people, not models in fabricated surroundings or situations trying to sell them.  The clothes in Sambourne’s photographs are caught in motion; they are being worn and lived in unlike their static fashion plate counterpart.  They are taken off the page and put onto the street. Through these photographs, I think it is easy to say that Edward Linley Sambourne can be called the earliest known street fashion photographer.