Totally Useless Fashion Trivia That I Learned While In Isolation
Between lockdowns, covid vaccine development, stress-eating and the threat of Donald Trump getting reelected, all I want is some light and fluff to blog about.
Besides, reading burns calories. Lucky you!
LEFT: Sonam Kapoor wearing the Dior dress on the cover of Elle India, January 2018. RIGHT: The original print by People Tree
1. UNCHRISTIAN DIOR. Sonam Kapoor graced the cover of Elle India in January 2018 wearing a dress from Dior’s 2018 cruise collection and soon after, the original creator of the print cried foul. Dior got caught copying the fabric design without permission. The yoga pose-adorned print belonged to People Tree, an artist/designer collective based in New Delhi, launched by Orijit Sen and Gurpreet Sidhu in 1991. Soon after learning about the Elle cover, Sen blasted Dior with a photo of the magazine cover beside his original print on Facebook, headlined “UnChristian Dior.”
Fairly quickly, an agreement was reached between the two parties and although the terms are confidential, the pecuniary aspect of the settlement was substantial enough for Sen to set up a proper studio in Goa, for himself and other members of the collective.
2. WHAT’S IN A NAME? Good design starts with the label, which is often the designer’s name. If it’s deemed a little less than perfect, why not change it? How does “Polo by Ralph Lifshitz” sound to you?
Coco Chanel: Gabriel Bonheur Chanel
Michael Kors: Karl Anderson Jr.
Karl Lagerfeld: Karl Lagerfeldt (dropped the “T” to make it sound more commercial)
Jimmy Choo: Jimmy Choo Yeang Keat (family name is Chow but it was misspelled in his birth certificate)
Ralph Lauren: Ralph Lifshitz
Yves Saint Laurent: Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent
Miuccia Prada: Miuccia Bianchi (was legally adopted by her aunt in the ‘80s so she could use the Prada surname)
3. EDITH HEAD TOOK CREDIT FOR GIVENCHY’S DESIGNS FOR SABRINA. Well, not directly. When Edith Head accepted her Oscar for Best Costume Design in 1955, she did not acknowledge Hubert de Givenchy—having designed the most iconic looks in the movie. The French designer was personally approached by Audrey Hepburn in Paris and the actress came back to Hollywood with sketches for Sabrina.
After the Oscars, tongues wagged around town and vilified Head as a person who took credit for other people’s work. But in her defense, costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorléac wrote an article for LA Times in 2010—29 years after Head’s death—explaining what really happened, from Head’s point of view. In the article, it stated that the “Givenchy dresses” were indeed, executed in Paramount Studios and did not come from the designer. She also had to make major tweaks to the designs because costumes are very different from real clothes. When asked by Dorléac, “Then you really designed everything?,” Head simply replied, “Oui, mon petit.”
Edith Head won 8 Academy Awards for best costume design, from 1949 to 1973.
4. THE “REAL” ANDY SACHS WAS IN THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA MOVIE. Blink and you’ll miss it, but Lauren Weisberger made a split-second cameo appearance in the film, as the twins’ nanny. Weisberger worked at Vogue as Anna Wintour’s assistant in 1999-2000. She wrote The Devil Wears Prada, released in 2003. The movie version came out in 2006.
Giorgio Armani (photo: businessinsider.com)
5A. GIORGIO ARMANI IS THE RICHEST LIVING FASHION DESIGNER. As of late 2019, Business Insider reported that the Italian designer is worth $11 billion, followed by Ralph Lauren with $6.7 billion. But the richest person in the fashion industry is Bernard Arnault, who is the chairman and CEO of LVMH, the parent company of Sephora, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and over 70 other luxury brands. Monsieur Arnault is worth $105.6 billion.
5B. NO, BERNARD ARNAULT IS NOT MARRIED TO SELMA HAYEK. He is often confused with another French fashion mogul, François-Henri Pinault, who married the Mexican-American actress in 2009. As the chairman and CEO of the Kering Group, which owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and many other luxury brands, Pinault is reported to be worth $35.1 billion.
6. WHO DESIGNED JACKIE’S WEDDING GOWN? Ann Lowe designed and executed Jackie’s wedding dress of ivory silk taffeta, with a portrait neckline and full bouffant skirt. In those days, moneyed fashionistas traveled to Paris to have their frocks made by Dior, Balmain, Balenciaga or Chanel, but Jackie chose the virtually unknown black fashion designer to create her gown. Ann Lowe was often described as society’s best kept secret, having designed for the Rockefellers, Roosevelts and du Ponts. She even had her own shop on Madison Avenue in the late ‘60s, becoming the first black-owned business in New York’s premiere high-end shopping location.
The Bouvier-Kennedy wedding in 1953 was a highly publicized event, but Lowe did not receive the credit she deserved for her work. She died in 1981 after an extended illness.
Valentino A/W 2015-2016 haute couture, as featured in the exhibition, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018. (photo: Arturo Veloira)
7. 2018’S “HEAVENLY BODIES: FASHION AND THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION” IS THE MOST ATTENDED EXHIBIT IN THE HISTORY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM. It is also the largest exhibition ever mounted by the museum, spanning 60,000 square feet in 25 galleries over two locations, Met-5th Avenue and Met-Cloisters. Approximately 1.7 million people saw the show, smashing a 40-year old record previously held by “Treasures of Tutankhamun” in 1978-79, viewed by about 1.4 million people.
Brooks Brothers advertisement from the 1940s.
8. BROOKS BROTHERS IS THE OLDEST AMERICAN CLOTHING BRAND THAT’S STILL IN OPERATION. H. & D. H. Brooks & Co. was established in 1818 in New York City by Henry Sands Brooks. His four sons inherited the business in 1833 and renamed it “Brooks Brothers,” in 1850.
Unbeknownst to many, the brand still manufactured some of its products in the U.S.: ties are made in New York, button-down shirts in North Carolina and bespoke/premium suits in Massachusetts. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was recently reported that these factories may be at risk of shutting down and that the company may be headed for bankruptcy.
Chinese immigrant workers at a factory in Prato, 2013. (photo: reuters.com)
9. “MADE IN ITALY”? THERE ARE NOW MORE CHINESE GARMENT FACTORIES THAN ITALIAN TEXTILE PRODUCERS IN PRATO, ITALY. As of 2013, there are about 4,000 Chinese-owned garment factories in Prato and they drive down prices by importing cheaper fabrics from China. As much as 50,000 Chinese immigrants live and work in Prato alone and about two thirds of them are there illegally, reports fashionnetwork.com.
A 30-minute drive north of Florence, this Tuscan town—once the world-renowned capital of textile manufacturing—is now the hub for cheaply made clothes in Italy. Before the end of the ‘90s, there were approximately 6,000 Italian textile factories in Prato and by 2011, there were only 3,000.
However, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese community in Prato was hailed by the whole country for helping curb the spread of the virus. Knowing what’s happening in Wuhan back in January, they all went into lockdown, three weeks before the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Italy.
Tracey Africa Norman
10. TRACEY NORMAN APPEARED ON THE BOX OF CLAIROL HAIR COLOR, 45 YEARS AGO. SHE’S ALSO TRANSGENDERED.
Also known as Tracey Africa, she was discovered by Irving Penn, who photographed her for Vogue Italia in 1971. She was a busy model in the ‘70s, with a secret that (almost) nobody knew. Until one day in 1980, she was outed by the hairstylist’s assistant during a photoshoot for Essence, who told the magazine editor about Norman’s birth gender. That was the beginning of the end for her modeling career, although she still managed to land a 6-month contract with Balenciaga in Paris, shortly after the incident.
In 2016, after she was profiled in thecut.com, a team from Clairol tracked down the former model and offered her another assignment, that is, to be the face of Clairol’s “Color As Real As You Are” campaign. She was 63 years old. “We’re honoured to bring back Tracey Norman as a woman who no longer has to hide her truth,” said Heather Carruthers, global associate brand director of Clairol, as reported by the guardian.com.
Tracey Norman for Clairol, in 2016.
