Fashion photography, judging by the ordinary run of the daily output, relies more on artifice than art. The photographer, in the modern manner, fixes his model in a state of frozen vivacity: stylised, artificial, often absurd. We who look at the photograph cannot identify it with real life as we lead it, nor even as we pursue it in our wishful thoughts; consequently the clothes which the model wears do not give us the urge to make them our own - which is the whole purpose of the picture.
Yet every now and then the seeker after truth, as well as beauty, is halted by a photograph which catches something from over and beyond the confines of conventional contemporary fashion; a photograph which bestows the sense of continuity with the past that true art gives, while causing at the same time a sudden feeling of affection for our present day and age.
Such a photograph is the one reproduced here. Tranquil and composed, it epitomises in one singularly beneficent portrait, all that is most elegant and most charming in this season of this year. Here is the hat, the face, the hair, the earrings, the gloves, the muff, the suit, the pose, the composure of the truly well-dressed woman; each detail in itself clearly characteristic of the fashion of to-day, each contributing to the finished composition, the perfect whole.
Consider the hat. It is placed dead straight, covering the forehead’s hairline. In France such a hat is called a plateau; but this is a very new and modish version which might well be likened to a sandwich gateau, the filling being of pale blue velvet - the pastel touch, much favoured with this winter’s sombre background colours. It is a Ronald Paterson hat, designed to match the tailored envelope muff, both in South-west African Persian lamb. Persian lamb is the most urbane of daytime furs, marrying most happily with town tweeds; and here it is indeed felicitous with Paterson’s suit of charcoal grey Shielana tweed, a suit which is, in fact, as are so many couturier’s models now, a jacket over a closely fitted dress.
The light gloves worn with this warm, dark tweed are a significant accent. It is many years now since gloves worn in winter have been in anything but dark colours. The freshness of white, buff, or pastel gloves brings a delicious air of leisured idleness: the hint of ladies’ maids, the suggestion of atmospheres and stratospheres far, far removed from the level of pavement smog.
Complementing the hat is the face: there is fashion in faces as well as in clothes. This winter the face is pale, with strongly marked brows, strongly curved. The line of the eyelashes is extended in an upward curve from the corner of the eye, the same upward curve as that of the mouth, the mouth which smiles in repose. It is an expression of the Eastern influence which pervades all fashion this winter - translated into English. The hair is brushed smoothly back to a high-swathed chignon, the chignon which has, in Paris, altogether supplanted the coiffure a garçon. Where there is no chignon a comparable effect of neatness and sleekness is achieved by contour, wave, and cut - not curl.
With the chignon go the earrings, those big, calm, cultured pearls, so wise in fashion wisdom. Accessories speak louder than clothes, and their fashion cycle is shorter. They are significant of their season not only in themselves but in the manner in which they are worn: the exact place where the brooch is pinned, the way the handbag is carried, the manner in which the umbrella is employed and deployed - there is fashion even in gesture. In our photograph, how much of the new femininity is in the graceful handling of the muff, in the pensive gesture of the gloved hand beneath the chin.
Perhaps the world of fashion is too much with us; and yet fashion is so entangled with our daily lives that it cannot be altogether disregarded, nor yet regarded as altogether frivolous. Indeed, it is the intelligent woman, interested in every aspect of living, alive to the arts as well as to the elegancies, who most quickly responds to new fashions and adapts them to her own individuality. She is the woman of taste, and her taste is of her time.
