Dress 1935 - 1942

Editor: Here we have "Dress", a drawing on paper made sometime between 1935 and 1942 by Julie C. Brush. The lines are so clean; it gives the piece a simultaneously modern and vintage feel. What jumps out at you? Curator: It whispers of old photographs found in attics, doesn’t it? Think about the 1930s, between world wars. Fashion was shedding its flapper skin, yearning for elegance and… restraint. This isn’t just a dress; it’s a captured moment, an echo of societal shifts. Does it feel hopeful or subdued to you? Editor: Subdued, definitely. Almost like a memory fading at the edges. It also looks incomplete somehow. Curator: Precisely! The linework—notice how spare it is. Brush is interested in the essential form, not embellishment. I wonder, is she showing us the Platonic ideal of a dress? Or perhaps hinting at the dress’s absence of the wearer? Editor: An absence? That's an interesting idea! It does feel ghostly without a body to fill it. Curator: Fashion plates, particularly those on paper, exist at a remove. Unlike a painting they gesture to use more so than immediate contemplation. We often focus on clothing as a means of individualization, but consider its flip-side in industrial construction. How are the wearer, artist and object unified in these forms of mass-production? Does such activity enhance or dampen a personal spirit? Editor: I hadn't thought of it that way, as a blueprint for mass-production! Now I’m seeing layers of meaning, beyond just a pretty dress. It feels heavier, more significant somehow. Curator: The beauty of art! It invites us to question, reinterpret, and see beyond the surface. Each glance unveils another secret, or maybe, a shared experience reflected back at us. Editor: This was amazing, I’ll never look at fashion drawing the same way again! Thanks!