1.4 Fashion

1.4.4 A brief history of fashion shows 2: from the 1920s to World War 2

Throughout the 20th century, the fashion show has hybridized with other arts, art forms and fields. Formerly mainly conceived as a social event, it has progressively become a complex ensemble fusing multiple elements and protagonists and resulting from crossbreeding and experimentations. 

Before World War 2, Italian-born couturière Elsa Schiapiarelli's creations and shows were typical examples. Her multifarious collaboration with surrealists (Man Ray, Cocteau, Dali…) and the tribute paid to other arts and live arts (i.e. painting, circus, etc.) entailed stupendous and often "shocking" (the name of her 1937 body-shaped perfume bottle) aforethought effects.

Not only were her creations experimentations, with a mise en abyme of her reflections on the coalescence between fashion, arts, innovation and technique (see, for example, the Cocteau embroideries, the use of trompe l'oeil, the introduction of the first zipper, of plastic, rayon, glassy materials) but her clothes foreshadowed what the "bricolage" of the 1960s would be (Hebdige). Clothes became enigmas, vêtements-à-clefs or puzzles with different entries.
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A Schiaparelli dress with the first visible zippers
Source

The same goes with her fashion shows like the Circus and Comedia Dell Arte collections, respectively, presented in 1938 and 1939. Audiences were tricked into thinking they were attending a spectacle.

Schiaparelli is but one example of the hybridization at stake. French couturière Jeanne Paquin's fashions were also characterized by multiple collaborations with artists and laden with historical references. She excelled in staging her models and dresses as she did during international exhibitions with the Paquin Pavilion (Turin, 1911) decorated as a Greek temple. Her designs were accessorized with objects like fans decorated by the artists of her time, and she designed costumes for the Ballets Russes, well aware of the commercial impact of such collaborations (Polan and Tredre, 19).

Throughout the 20th century, fashion shows have evolved by clothing, with many designers placing experimentation and hybridity front and centre and progressively blending fashion and (performing) arts. 

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