Dress c. 1936

Curator: This drawing, simply titled "Dress," was created around 1936 by Jessie M. Benge using colored pencils on paper. Editor: It feels almost ghostly, doesn't it? The wispy lines and soft colors give it an ethereal quality. I imagine a dress floating in a dream. Curator: Indeed. Benge's style has echoes of both academic art in its precision, and the decorative arts in its subject. These detailed fashion drawings had practical uses, yet can be admired as beautiful pieces themselves. Imagine designers studying such drawings, extracting details for modern applications, long after the cultural context faded. Editor: It’s so light! Those tiny flowers scattered across the fabric make me think of hidden gardens, places you'd only discover by accident. It's clearly a study, almost a preliminary sketch, since there's another dress, much less defined, in the background. A sense of experimentation pervades. Curator: Precisely. Designs like these held specific social significance; fashion always has. Reflecting both the aspirations and limitations placed upon women of the time. It is really a matter of considering what roles were visible, and how were those roles expressed visually. In addition, the drawing allows us to glimpse those realities by representing contemporary garment designs, but from the distance of observation. Editor: It also sparks my imagination, seeing what that fashion implies: garden parties, whispered conversations behind silk fans... but also constraints. Those elaborate layers, all the work and restriction, so carefully made... Curator: That’s where its power lies, I think: in the delicate tension between beauty and societal context, between dream and dressmaker’s design. Editor: Yes, looking at the fashion, as you've made so obvious, it also suggests stories beyond just style. Curator: Absolutely, its a visual poem of its time.