Dress c. 1937

Editor: This is "Dress," a pencil drawing from around 1937, by Ray Price. I’m really struck by how meticulously the fabric’s texture is rendered with just a pencil. What stands out to you about this piece? Curator: I'm drawn to the intersection of fashion and fine art here. The drawing emphasizes the labour and materials embedded in clothing production. Think about the pencil itself, the paper: both are processed resources, commodities that speak to the broader economy of the time. The sketch's very existence is rooted in consumption. Do you think the choice of rendering a dress instead of a portrait impacts how we understand it? Editor: That’s an interesting point. It’s not just a pretty picture; it’s about the materials, the manufacturing, the labor… Maybe it’s making a comment on the fashion industry itself? Or who would be wearing this garment at the time it was made? Curator: Precisely. Consider how the industrial revolution democratized fabric production. A design like this, carefully drafted, was ultimately meant for mass production, for consumption. The pencil drawing is itself an early stage of production, the means before the end. The "high art" element of the hand-rendered design seems almost at odds with the ultimate end – mass-produced clothing. It makes us think about value, doesn't it? The artistic versus the functional? Editor: Definitely. So, we’re seeing the artwork as part of a much larger, tangible system of creating, producing, and selling clothes, more than a pretty dress? Curator: Absolutely. It’s less about aesthetics in a vacuum and more about the tangible conditions that made this drawing, and the potential dress, possible. Even something that appears as simple as a sketch is deeply embedded in processes of labor and materiality. Editor: I’ll never look at a fashion drawing the same way again! It really shows how even seemingly simple art is connected to larger systems of making and consumption.