Georges Lepape. Fashion plate from Les choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape Paris (France), 1911.

Print: illustration from Les choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape (limited edition number 261). Design for a white dress in the 'Hellenic style', signed 'Georges Lepape'.

261

This fashion plate by Georges Lepape depicts a woman in a simple, high-waisted white gown by Paul Poiret (1879-1944). Poiret was one of the most influential and notorious designers of the late 1900s/early 1910s. His gowns followed the natural line of a slim, uncorseted body, which is clearly shown in Lepape's illustration, although many women still had to resort to longline corsets to achieve the same effect. Compared to the elaborately detailed and constructed gowns that many fashion designers produced, his designs were audaciously simple and bold, and sometimes quite far-sighted. For example, his 'robe de minute', a gown made of two rectangles of fabric, was created in 1911, ten years before near-identically constructed chemise dresses became widespread (see T.118-1975). Lepape's illustration also shows the model's head simply wrapped in a pink turban, in contrast to the elaborately arranged coiffures that many fashionable women favoured. Decoration is minimal, with a single flower catching the slim skirt in slightly at the knee, and a tasselled girdle at the waist.

Poiret's success was short-lived, as his influence did not last beyond the 1910s. Although he continued designing into the 1920s and created gowns for Liberty's in 1933, he failed to recapture the success and notoriety he had enjoyed in the 1910s.

- Daniel Milford-Cottam, January 2012

CIRC.261-1976