Boys's Dress c. 1940

Esther Hansen made this design for a Boy's Dress in muted beige and white. It makes me think about the intimacy of dressmaking. The care it takes to conjure a garment from a flat piece of cloth, the way fabric drapes and folds. The texture here is subtly rendered, giving the piece a tactile dimension. I imagine Hansen spending hours hunched over her desk, carefully mapping out each detail, and wondering whether she actually sewed this design. Maybe this was a plan for something never made, a kind of paper architecture. The delicate white embroidery around the edges of the dress are so precise. It’s almost as if it’s emerging out of the flat surface, and reminds me of Matisse's cut-outs, a way of painting with scissors, where form and color meet in surprising ways. Hansen’s really got a keen eye for how things come together, the details, like a conversation between generations of artists who all speak the same language of form and feeling.