Woman's Coat 1935 - 1942

Curator: This drawing, titled "Woman's Coat," comes to us from between 1935 and 1942, attributed to Charles Criswell. What strikes you first about it? Editor: The starkness of the blue immediately grabs me. It's almost aggressively blue, that heavy dye no doubt relying on a complex industrial process and labor. Curator: Absolutely. Criswell likely conceived this design during the interwar period, a time marked by economic hardship and rising global tensions. It would be interesting to place Criswell's design work within those social parameters. Editor: And look at the material! It’s rendered as if thick velvet, possibly. You can imagine the texture—or at least the fantasy of opulent texture that would have had value. Curator: Precisely, this could very well represent the aspirations of a certain class, or perhaps even the idealized image that designers promoted at the time through sketches like this. Editor: You’re right, it's as much a reflection of consumer dreams as of material reality. Those black decorative embellishments too; probably machine made, certainly standardized. What did they signify to consumers back then? Curator: Likely a kind of affordable luxury. Ready-to-wear was changing how people consumed fashion. Though we only see the drawing, one can imagine its influence in commercial patterns or other types of visual media. Editor: Right. One can also consider how this form, this drawing as an object, found its way into our collections: it shows a different side of making and industry that can so easily get overlooked when studying only existing extant material objects of fashion. Curator: I think we agree on that. Thank you for speaking about it from this perspective! It makes you really consider its value as not only drawing but object with all of the socioeconomic factors associated with it at the time of its execution and even at present time. Editor: Definitely! Thanks for placing it in its proper historic perspective. Hopefully, viewers will see a lot more than just a drawing of clothing.