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Fetico Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

Gucci Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

Sir Terry Pratchett is a master of the written word but he ain’t shit for the way he trained me to accept dumb naming conventions because i got three missed calls on my phone from Scam Likely and I spent like half a day wondering who I knew named Scam. 

Dress

c. 1807-1810

DAR Museum

Viviano Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

GOd okay I went to my neighbor’s housewarming, and don’t get me wrong, I love parties (if everybody doesn’t give me  all of their attention all the time and tell me that i’m smart and funny and pretty I’ll DIE), but I forget how stressful it is to introduce yourself to new people when you work in a politically charged field.  The whole evening was this:

Party Guest:  So, have you lived in the area long?

[Okay, let’s think. White male, thirties, tall, muscle tee, sandals, wedding ring, but here without a partner.  I just overheard him complaining about tariffs, so he’s either left-leaning or a disillusioned republican.  Good sign, definitely not MAGA.  Ah, that’s right, he brought his daughters – ages 5 and 7, well-behaved in a crowd – and they’re wearing princess dresses… doting father with an active role in raising his kids, lets them choose their own outfits… my gut is telling me heterosexual male feminist.  That could be good or bad – statistically speaking, he believes in climate change… but that means 50/50 odds of anti-nuclear sentiment.  I need more information, but I must answer carefully.  We’re rapidly approaching the Question.]

Me: Not long!  I just moved down from Boston a few months ago –

[Ball is in his court.  Boston has been in the news lately for being an immigrant sanctuary city, but that’s mostly local news – I’ll get information based on body language.  Oh, I may have made a tactical error.  This is an opportunity for sports rivalry to come up, and I am ill-educated on the subject.  Quick, I need a counter maneuver.] 

Me: – but I actually grew up in the area.

[Good save, and a decent delaying action.  If he takes the bait, I can redirect the conversation to local childhood reminiscence.  He’s had two margaritas, and they’re starting to affect him – talking a bit too loud, and his expansive hand gestures bespeak more than typical New Jerseyan gregariousness.  That could be to my advantage… unless it makes him too bold].

Party Guest:  Coming back home for family, or is it a work thing?

[Shit, okay, he asked about work.  This could be the endgame… but he’s foolishly thrown me a lifeline.  I can’t lie, the hosts already know the real answer, but I can dissemble by playing to his fatherly conversational weak spots.]

Me:  I moved for work, but my family does live nearby, so that’s a nice perk as well.  I get to see my nephews a lot more often!  The eldest just turned five.

[That should do it.  My nephews are about the same age as his kids, which will build a rapport and redirect the conversation back to himself.  It should be easy to get him talking about his daughters.  Unless… oh no.  He’s two drinks in on a Sunday night and working on a third in front of his children, while his wife stays home.  She wakes up earlier than him, potentially much earlier.  He’s been talking about the economy a lot.  Damn, recently laid off?  He’s going to focus on work.]

Party Guest: That’s awesome.  What sort of job?

[The brilliant bastard.  He’s good, he’s very good.  Truly a worthy opponent.  Pierced right through every single gambit and went straight to the Question. Have I met my match? Will I finally be humbled?  It’s do or die.]

Me:  I’m an engineer at an energy company.

[Alea iacta est.]

Party Guest:  Energy?

[Last chance.  He's intelligent and fiendishly clever, but hope against hope that he’s more well-read in Aristotle than Rutherford.  This should dead-end him]

Me:  Nuclear, kind of. Fusion, not fission.

Party Guest:  Oh, that sounds cool.

Me:  Mhm.  So, how do you know Bill and Stephanie?

Party Guest:  I was in film school with Bill.  Have you seen his documentary?

[Ha. Another victory, all the sweeter for having been hard-fought. Time for a celebratory cornichon, maybe some crackers]

How would you describe the art style of the fashion design illustrations? I love the antiquarian looking style

hello my dear! 💖

what an interesting question! 💕💕 either fortunately or unfortunately, you asked either the best or worst person to talk about this lmao 😅😅 as an art history phd student, pretty much all I do is analyze images, so I definitely have some Thoughts™️

first, I'll say that style varies hugely based on time period and publication. even within decades, I've seen a wide variety of styles used, so if you had particular images in mind that you wanted me to talk about, feel free to let me know and I'd be thrilled to discuss those more specifically! ☺️☺️

because there is such a diverse range of stylistic approaches to illustrating fashion plates/images, I'm hesitant to make any sweeping generalizations here, but I will pick out a few themes that I've seen come up a lot:

2d medium vs. 3d object – one of the key features of fashion plates is that, ultimately, they are trying to sell you a garment/style. of course, clothing is three-dimensional, and especially when looking at things like bustled garments, they take up a lot of space in real life that is difficult to represent in a 2d medium. because of this "conflict" between the necessity of depicting the garment and the realities of the medium of drawing/print, we tend to see some odd positioning of the figures. they might be awkwardly bent or twisting in order to show off both a bodice and a bustle at the same time (the figure on the left here is a good example). we also see some "flattening" of the picture plane, wherein the placement of a normally voluminous feature (like a bustle) doesn't really make sense in a naturalistic space, but rather is almost parallel to the chest/bodice of the figure, when in real life it would project backwards rather than weirdly sideways (you can see this in almost any 1880s fashion plate featuring dresses, but this one is a nice example). [also please note that this is not a condemnation of these choices, but rather an analysis of why they're necessary in this medium]

ye olde photoshoppe – connecting to my first point, fashion plates are trying to sell you something, and therefore their artists have incentive to make that product look as attractive/appealing as possible. I do get comments from time to time about how "people don't look like that" or "that's not how bodies work," which, while true, also elide the fact that these artists are not necessarily trying to be naturalistic in their depiction of the human body – they're trying to show you the most marketable version of the human body as determined by the cultural values of their day. just as today we might see impossibly thin models on magazine covers or clearly fake thigh gaps in online retail, so too are the creators of these fashion plates embellishing and exaggerating the human form to make it as appealing as possible to consumers – they're selling a fantasy, not a reality

non-specificity – another thing that is fairly common across historical fashion plates is the non-specificity of facial features on the figures portrayed. if you feel so inclined, take a scroll through the blog and compare the faces of the figures in the illustrations (obviously this does not work in the same way for photographs). you'll likely find that you keep seeing the same face over and over again. what's more, that face has almost no distinctive features, and is almost doll-like in its perfection. given what we've already discussed, this isn't a surprise, since fashion plates are meant to sell garments, and therefore a portrait-like rendering of a specific model isn't really the goal. the figures in fashion plates essentially are dolls – they are meant to be "dressed" in whichever style is being sold, and visually appealing yet non-specific enough to potentially interest a large population of possible consumers

whew! okay I will wrap up my ramblings now, but I hope this was at least a little bit helpful or perhaps mildly interesting! ☺️☺️ as you can see, I love doing this kind of visual analysis, so (as I mentioned above) if you have specific images you wanted me to talk about stylistically, feel free to let me know!! ☺️💕 and thank you again for this great question! 💖💖

if you've made it to the end, thanks for reading my ramblings, and let me know what y'all think about the stylistic features of fashion plates if you have thoughts! 🥰🥰

IT IS [WEELVIL] WEDNESDAY MY DUDES

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