Swan & Edgar’s Fashionable Furs #A Postcard | Zazzle #Sold!!

Original & vintage art © First Night Design [www.firstnightdesign.wordpress.com]

Source: Swan & Edgar’s Fashionable Furs #A Postcard | Zazzle

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A Glimmer of Optimism | The Genealogy of Style

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON The Genealogy of Style.

Drawings, and Sketches by Henri Matisse

One may well ask, as Henri Matisse was best known for his models being clad in Moroccan or Parisian attire, rather then in Romanian ethnic dress or better still, not clad at all… So, why a Romanian Blouse, out of the blue?

Looking at some of Matisses’s earlier works one could discern the idea in the blouse of the 1939 dancer “Une danseuse au repos”, showing a seated woman wearing a Romanian blouse. Likewise, another of Matisse’s paintings, “Still Life with sleeping woman” , now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC . The sitter is a woman wearing an embroidered long-sleeve blouse, decorated on the upper part of the sleeve similarly to the Romanian blouses. An even earlier version, with prevailing greens appears in 1937. So, from these and other examples, one could suggest unequivocally, that the idea was not new in the artist’s mind. However, what was new on this occasion, in 1940, was that the Romanian Blouse  had become central to the subject, forcing it on ‘front stage’ and giving it a specific, named identity. The canvas must have been discussed, if not prompted by the visit of an old friend the Romanian painter Theodor Pallady (1871-1956), whose portrait was…

Source: A Glimmer of Optimism | The Genealogy of Style.

First Night Design | Showcasing the Birds — Now available to Buy!

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At last I have uploaded these birds to all my art galleries and what a relief it is too!

The Cuckoo’s Note:
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‘Like a Lapwing’:
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Ruddy Duck:
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Whirring Pheasant Springs:
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First Night Design | Edwardian Fashion — Swan & Edgar’s is all the rage!

Swan & Edgar’s Fashionable Furs © Sarah Vernon

Swan & Edgar’s Fashionable Furs was one of the first greeting cards I made at Zazzle. I scanned this advertisement from one of my early 20th century editions of the English theatre periodical, Play Pictorial.

Even if you have never heard of Swan & Edgar’s, this grand department store was housed in one of the most recognisable and iconic buildings of Piccadilly Circus, between Piccadilly and Regent Street. It was the establishment in which to be seen for it sold the most sumptuous clothes for the well-heeled. The store had its beginnings in a haberdashery stall in St James Market run by William Edgar early in the 19th century. After meeting George Swan, the two men combined resources:

They first opened a shop together in Ludgate Hill which Mr Swan had been operating, but moved to 20 Piccadilly in 1812. They then moved to 49 Regent Street when their former site was demolished to make way for Piccadilly Circus, which had been the home to the Western Mail coach offices and the Bull & Mouth public house. George Swan died in 1821, however Mr Edgar continued to use the name. By 1848 the premises had expanded to 45-51 and the entire corner of Piccadilly Circus… [Wikipedia]

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Foreshades of Grey (2)

More delights from Pippa Rathborne to make up for an inability to create my own posts with the current connection within any decent time frame; I think the Dark Angels post took me three days! Plus ca change!

Pippa Rathborne's LAST POST

or To love and be loved

Madame Marie-Adelaide in Turkish costume, by Étienne Liotard, 1753, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Image source: WGA
The book is not a mere prop. This was a princess who loved reading and collecting books for their own sake. She ended up with 5000 volumes in her library. Marie-Adelaide was the favourite daughter of Louis XV. She never married and spent fifty-seven years of her life at Versailles. Unfortunately for her she was intelligent, and ambitious, so being denied a fulfilling role at court embittered her. She survived the Revolution, and all her brothers and sisters, and her nephew Louis XVI and his queen, and died in exile in Trieste in 1800, aged 67.

The majority of female readers, whether they were intellectually curious or just wanted to be trendy, were brainwashed by the best-selling novels of Rousseau. He extolled female education in…

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First Night Design | Happy Birthday Cecil Beaton | waldina

Today is the 110th birthday of Cecil Beaton.  He could evoke every emotion with his camera.  His photographs are as breathtaking as they were the day they were taken and you feel like you are part of them, you can feel the love, the sorrow, the loss, the opulence.  The world is a better place because of Cecil Beaton.

via Happy Birthday Cecil Beaton | waldina

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The Victorian Fashion Plate

The Victorian Fashion Plate Card by FirstNightDesign

And here’s the second in the series using black & white clip art from The Graphics Fairy. In fact, Karen only added this fashion plate lady to her blog today!

Linking to Brag Monday.

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• The Walking Bicycle or The Dandy Horse (firstnightdesign.wordpress.com)

Pink Bustier Mother’s Day — New!

Pink Bustier Mother’s Day by FirstNightDesign

The bustier or corset was once a vital part of a lady’s wardrobe, not, as today, a fashion statement that anyone can choose to embrace, whether Madonna, Rihanna or Eddie Izzard. Worn as an under- or outer-garment,  its purpose has always been to enhance female sexuality by narrowing the waist and pushing up the bosom to effect an enticing décolletage.

Woman’s corset, France, c. 1730-1740. Silk plain weave with supplementary weft-float patterning. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. [photo credit: Wikimedia]

But imagine the pain of a whale-boned corset, for such they were until relatively recently when mesh panels became an option. Prior to that, iron had been used; even when whalebone replaced iron, wood was sometimes used.  Imagine, also, the laces at the back being tightened beyond the reach of breath!  Do you remember wincing at the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) is having the laces of her corset pulled to a circumference of 18 1/2 inches — thought to be the ideal for female beauty — by Mammy (Hattie McDaniel)?

In the 19th century, corsets were sometimes advertised as postural health aids, even though such physical strictures “could lead to fainting and headaches, or even to internal organ damage”. †

Although corsets have been around, possibly since 2000 BC, their popularity was especially marked in European society during the 16th century and later in the Victorian era. The bustier graphic from Digital Kiss probably dates from a Victorian fashion plate illustration.

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Related articles

• 18 Inches of Fashion (kennesaw.edu) †
• History of Corsets (wikipedia.com)
• Building a Corset – Part One (tulleandtweed.com)