Costume Drawing 

Curator: Let's turn our attention to this "Costume Drawing," a work on paper by George Barbier. The medium appears to involve watercolor and pencil, presenting an intriguing design. Editor: My first thought is how whimsical this is! The light washes of color create a delicate mood. The character feels ethereal, but there's an undercurrent of playful satire in the rendering. Curator: Absolutely. Barbier's commercial illustrations were regularly reproduced through the pochoir process, an elaborate process using stencils to apply bold color by hand. It gives these sorts of costume designs a striking immediacy. What do you make of the symbols within the dress design? Editor: Oh, the motifs on the skirt are quite intriguing. They feel vaguely ancient, perhaps alluding to stylized lotus blossoms and even peacock feathers, which signal royalty, rebirth and spiritual awakening across different cultures. They provide the character with a powerful narrative that she may not even realize. Curator: Indeed! The labor of fashion – of conceiving, crafting, and adorning, serves as a method to create these elaborate displays of personal transformation, through this symbolic ornamentation on fabrics, which at their origins were hand-crafted and carried profound symbolism, later replicated industrially to scale. This costume itself suggests an era caught between the handmade and the mass-produced. Editor: That's a fascinating connection to consider – this bridge between cultural heritage and popular imagination. Look, above all, it's an invitation to dream! Barbier invites us into a rich internal world, one where the character transcends mere materiality, transforming into an almost mythic being before our eyes. Curator: It has given me food for thought in regards to labor. Barbier wasn't simply an illustrator but also an astute commentator on production. Editor: Likewise, it's made me reconsider the way archetypes can become self-actualizing as people identify with specific symbols, taking command of a narrative.