New York Field Work - Lunch with Julie Dale
Hello. It’s been…13 months since I last did an update here? That’s pretty bad. It’s a combination of me hitting a bit of a wall last March and not having a huge amount to show for myself until way later into the year, and the stuff I DID have to show for myself being mostly deeply uninteresting university bureaucracy and not fit for a little newsletter update. However, that changes today! I’m in New York City at the moment, for a week of field work meeting all kinds of interesting people and visiting all kinds of interesting museums. I won’t be able to post about every little thing but I thought I’d put the highlights up;.
Meeting Julie
For those not in the know, Julie Schafler Dale is a titan in her field: art-to-wear. She started “the first gallery devoted to clothing as an art form", Julie: Artisan’s Gallery in 1973 in New York and ran it up until 2013. She literally wrote the book on the subject, Art to Wear (1986), where she conducted interviews with significant makers (like Marian) and used the transcripts to show a “state of the art form” style book that is still a deeply important text for understanding the movement.
Julie and I talked last year on the phone, but we arranged to meet for lunch at a fabulous little Scandinavian restaurant in Chelsea called Björk. We noshed on gravlax and Swedish meatballs and spent the best part of 2 hours chatting away about all kinds of things. She gave me the history of some of Marian’s long-lost art-to-wear pieces sold through her galleries, and talked about Marian and K. Lee Manuel’s collaborations with Ben Compton.
Acid Vionnet, lost forever as far as we know.
Nocturnal Moth, modeled by Ben Compton himself
Ben and Marian would send the garments back and forth in the mail along with correspondence until they created these gorgeous twin pieces. Nocturnal Moth now lives safely in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collections along with a few other Marian pieces used in the 2019 Off the Wall: American Art to Wear exhibition, Acid Vionnet is sadly lost to time as far as anyone knows. Before it vanished, however, Julie told me she wore it to the third Met Gala in 1974 alongside Anne Byrne (Dustin Hoffman’s then-wife) who was wearing one of Ben Compton’s dresses. Who knew Marian made it onto the Met Gala steps in 1974 alongside Cher and others!
We spoke about books I should read, and art pieces I should familiarise myself with, but most of all we talked about the importance of the art-to-wear movement in design. Julie feels very strongly that it is the intersection of so many concepts I am dealing with in my research: the art/craft debate and false dichotomy; concepts of post-colonialism and ethnic inspiration; the shift from commercial to artistic runways in modern fashion; the list goes on.
Julie has an archive of her own, with correspondence from the makers who sold through her gallery including Marian. She also has all the tapes and transcripts from the Art to Wear book, which means a return visit before too long is 100% needed. Her private collection is extensive, and in the process of being donated to a few different institutions, but the idea of rifling through her pieces is too enticing to pass up.
Julie and I are having lunch again tomorrow with Debra Rapoport, another titan of her field, and a few others, which I will duly report on in another post. We got on like a house on fire and I’m very grateful to have her on side. But lunch cannot last forever, so we said our farewells and parted ways so I could head up to the Met Museum for my appointment with their archives.
The Met Archives
Marian has a couple pieces in the Met, one donated by what appears to be a wealthy New York socialite in the 1980s for mysterious reasons, and another Marian herself donated in 2003. I spoke to an archivist before coming to New York who helped me prepare a few folders of material that may have helped to shed some light. I am sorry to say that it was an utter bust. In 5 folders of material, only one item was truly useful: a letter Marian sent to the Curator of the Costume Institute offering to come by to catch up when she was next in town. No reply was found, nor any of the accession files I was hoping for. I have sent a frantic email to the archivist but I don’t think I’ll be able to solve these mysteries this trip.
I do, however, have an appointment on Tuesday to see the actual items themselves (and take pictures), so I will at least get to meet the pieces while I’m here. Another one for the “next trip” list!
The letter in question.