Dimensions: height 269 mm, width 180 mm
Copyright: Rijks Museum: Open Domain
This fashion plate from 1923 is made with lithograph. It’s all about the ink here, right? The thin, sharp lines, the paper's flatness, and the bold outlines create a stylized world, like a film noir set in a dollhouse. I can imagine the artist hunched over a table, carefully drawing each line, each fold of fabric. What was she thinking about as she rendered these scenes of leisure and luxury? Was she dreaming of a life beyond the page? Look how the flat blocks of color create depth and volume. And the exaggerated perspective – it’s like the artist is playing with us, inviting us into a world that's both real and artificial. You can see a similar approach in the work of fashion illustrators like Erté, or even in the graphic design of someone like A.M. Cassandre, who were all trying to capture the dynamism of modern life. It's like they're all in conversation, these artists, riffing off one another, pushing the boundaries of representation. And it’s up to us to listen in and enjoy the show!
Comments
Très Parisien promoted itself as chic and elegant. Between 1920 and 1936 it presented creations by such couturiers as Chéruit, Premet, Philip et Gaston, and Lanvin. The young, svelte models are all ultra-modern, shown talking on the phone, smoking and playing tennis. The illustrations also show that over the course of the 1920s, skirt lengths had risen to just below the knee, before dropping back down to calf length in the 1930s. The small plates were printed on transparent paper using a stencilling technique known as en pochoir and then hand coloured; many of them are unsigned. The signature ‘Joujou’ belonged to Germaine Paule Joumard, who was the director of Très Parisien, as well as one of the magazine’s illustrators.
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