Costume de serge blanc plissé. 1919

This fashion plate, Costume de serge blanc plissé, was made anonymously in 1919. It has a quiet sort of palette, all gentle blues and greens, like a faded memory. The textures in this print are so delicately rendered. Look at the way the pleats of the coat are suggested, not with hard lines, but with subtle shifts in tone. There’s a real tenderness in that, a sense of something fleeting. You can almost feel the fabric moving, the way light catches on those folds. The colour palette is restricted, but what’s so interesting is how much variation they manage to achieve. The cat, sitting quietly at the bottom, feels like a grounding presence, like a reminder that even in the world of high fashion, there’s always room for something real. I’m reminded of the work of Balthus, who painted cats into all sorts of strange situations, like a window into the unconscious. Anyway, this print is about art as an ongoing conversation, a way of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, even if we don’t know who they are.