An Invitation to
a 1950’s CUPCAKE Party
Rao Musunuru MD ART GALLERY
PHSC West Campus, Library Bldg. PHSC , 10230 Ridge Rd. New Port Richey, Florida 34654,
Thursday, June 27, 3-5:00 pm
Susanne Nielsen exhibits
Susannenielsen.blogspot.com
My Mother's Dresses Series - Part 3
(5 (of 12) Paintings and Recreation of the 1950’s Dresses)
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(Sewing project realized with couture seamstress Theresia Thielke )
Faculty/Staff Exhibition: June 10th – July 25th, 2024 ( hours: Mon-Thurs. 11:00 am-4:00 pm)
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Rao Musunuru MD ART GALLERY
PHSC West Campus, Library Bldg. PHSC , 10230 Ridge Rd. New Port Richey, Florida 34654,
https://phsc.edu/campus-life/rao-musunuru-md-art-gallery
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THE PROJECT
My Mother's Dresses Series
FIVE of "My Mother's Dresses" painted (and dresses sewn to be shown)
ABOUT THIS SERIES:
Women of the 1950s and their Fashions
Exerpt introduction: Fashion in the 1950s, donation from Else and Ingeborg Heiligener, Museum of Applied Arts, Cologne
"The fifties offer an incredible variety of fashion developments, various styles and fashionable innovations (…) whether vertical line, stretched line or serpentine line, tulip or dome line, Y line, lily of the valley line, H line, I line , A-line, Y-line, arrow, bag or barrel line, trapeze line or balloon look; there were no limits to the inventiveness of the fashion designers. And across Europe, the female part of the population was particularly popular in the wake of the economic miracle “We are only too happy to carry the magic of Paris with the imaginative, sometimes fantastic lines.” (Isabella Belting: When mother was young...fashion hits from the fifties. In: Nylon and Capri Sun - The fifties feeling. Exhibitions.-Cat. Fashion Museum of the Munich City Museum 2001/2002. Muenchen 2001, p. 20.
Fashion was in a real frenzy: after the war-related shortage of materials and the secondary use of all kinds of materials to make clothing, abundance apparently followed. Women once again longed for lavish amounts of fabric, luxury and elegance. New plastic fibers promised an easy-care variety of materials. The new fabrics were now bright and colorful, the patterns partly influenced by contemporary art and new design.
The change from the female silhouette from the masculine, almost militarily strict figure of the 1940s with broad shoulders, the exaggerated bust, the barely defined waist, the undefined hips, the high hem of the skirt and the shoes with rounded toes, thick soles and strong steep heels to the exact opposite was inevitable: the immediate past had to be forgotten and replaced by a new, significantly more promising reality. The image of women underwent a fundamental change. Fashion had become an obvious representation of women's “reclaimed,” traditional role in society and the family. The female figure was “exaggerated”; The result was an emphatically feminine, elegant silhouette. For most women, however, this could not be achieved without “aids”: the body-shaping, modeling underwear was placed around the bust like an armor. The corset found its way back into fashion. The underskirt or petticoat gave the dresses the intoxicating width and support they needed. The wide skirt was more suitable for young, slim women, while the tight skirt - the other dominant line of this decade - was more suitable for more mature ladies.
The difference between morning and afternoon attire still existed. The morning was reserved for household chores; In the afternoon, ladies dressed elegantly to visit exhibitions, go shopping or to have tea or coffee with friends. The cocktail party, known from Great Britain and the United States, also became increasingly popular in Germany, and with it the cocktail dress, which - sewn from fine materials, with a short skirt hem, often décolleté and richly decorated - increasingly replaced the exclusive evening gown for festive occasions. Accessories that were precisely coordinated with the clothing were essential and had a high fashion value.
Even though there was, initially, resistance to the new body-hugging fashion-silhouette among women, especially in England and the USA, its triumph could no longer be stopped. Parisian haute couture regained a leading role in the 1950s - despite all the competition, particularly from Italian Alta Mode - not least through the work of gifted couturiers such as Christian Dior, Jacques Fath, and Cristobal Balenciaga. It was particularly the wealthy American customers who made Parisian fashion an export hit. Germany maintained a relative independence from Paris, but was only able to evade the fashion dictates radiating from there to a limited extent. Paris remained the fashion metropolis from which inspiration and impulses came.
In contrast to the French, the German couturiers, most of whom had established themselves in Berlin, preferred bright colors and unusual patterns. They were soon able to develop a wide-ranging collection on an international level. But their creations were also out of reach for most women: influenced by the couture designs, by the film stars, and pop singers, models and mannequins, they often fulfilled their fashion dreams by sewing them at home or had them sewn for them by seamstresses.
The main source of information for women interested in fashion were fashion magazines, which quickly processed the suggestions from haute couture, films and fashion fairs into their own designs. Product espionage in the ateliers of the big couture houses was not unusual at a time when fashion was gaining particular importance in all social classes. The clothing regulations that guaranteed elegant, ladylike and always appropriate clothing with matching accessories could be gleaned in detail in the fashion journals.
Text from Catalog of 15 garments/Schenkung Heiliger to Museum fuer Angewandte Kunst /Craft Museum Cologne, Germany
Susanne Nielsen's mother Anneliese Schmidt was one of these women of the 1950s who sewed her own elegant wardrobe. In 2021-24 Susanne Nielsen recreated these gowns in cooperation with seamstress Theresia Thielke ( born1931) and under the guidance of Anneliese Schmidt (1930-2023)
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THE DRESSES
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The Creation of the 50s Dresses - from photographs, few base-patterns modified to suit Susanne's mother and contemporary Postwar (WWII) women also had done, begins in 2021 and is completed in June 2023.
Susanne Nielsen and Theresia Thielke
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Susanne and Theresia share a friendship that began in 1098 when Theresia volunteered to answer telephones during Susanne Nielsen's hour long weekly German Radio Show in the studio. When Susanne heard about Theresia's interesting life and her work in the fashion world, she did a number of interviews for her show. When the 3-D component of the My Mother's Dresses became Susanne's next project, Theresia was a natural choice to help (re-) create these beautiful dresses. Visits with discussions between Susanne and Theresia continue through completion in June 2023. German-born Theresia Thielke's couture experience goes back to the 1960s training and work for couturiers like Oleg Cassini in New York, where she sewed the official wardrobe of First Lady Jackie Kennedy, incl. the inaugural gown and later sewed for First Lady Barbara Bush.
Couture seamstress Theresia Thielke is executed the patterns and creation of the dresses in constant consulting with Susanne in person and her mother (via phone) every week.
Susanne Nielsen and her Mother - Designer, post-war Woman of the 1950s
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She designed and sewed this summer dress in black georgette fabric with a pattern of red roses for elegant evenings out.
Like other patterned fabrics, this dress was sewn from curtain or furniture fabric that her father, a self-made traveling salesman who used all his connections to find resources (a friend’s ceramic studio for dishes, hats in exchange for pretty feathers his daughter brought from her work on a chicken farm) had given his her. These fabrics gave her dresses the vibrancy to stand out among the other candidates who could only distinguish themselves as excellent dancers or talented singers. The weight and fine Primrose pattern of this garment signaled its better quality.
Dress # 11: Black silk Taffeta long ball gown
This ball gown – black silk taffeta – her mother gave this gift to her daughters as part of the suitcase full of “survival” clothing that she wished her two young Teens to have – just as she shared her make-up with them. This ball gown had been made for the always elegant mother by one of her two tailors in downtown Berlin before the war.
She copied it and made a new version for herself from lining taffeta material when the first one was worn out.
Her mother had a suitcase of fine materials for dresses that she had left during the war with her Berlin tailor. When this woman’s shop was destroyed in a bombing of the city, she was not sure she would find the suitcase with her mother’s the precious fabrics again.
But when she did, she returned it, and her thankful client invited her to her home to tea and gave the tailor a gift of the silver tea set as “thank you” for her loyalty and honesty to guard and return such precious resources in times of war.
Dress # 10: Green Taffeta, embroidered evening gown
This dress shows a strapless, ruffled top with elongated waistline, and a green taffeta skirt, and hand embroidered curved decorative pattern arching over the front middle of the floor length skirt.
For the happy nights filled with dance with her fiancée, she dressed up in this green ball gown.
The dress then became a “witness” as she loaned it to a cousin of her groom at her small wedding. Her future parents-in-law came to inspect the straps they had required her to add to the (too) alluring evening gown.
Her wedding dress was borrowed from her older sister, the church and dinner paid for by a marriage insurance policy. The wedding party of ten guests dined with the married couple for a lunch at a finely set round table in a private room in the restaurant at the city hall.
Dress # 3: Gray silk skirt black top with rose
An elegant two-piece strapless evening dress, the black taffeta top with its pink rose in the middle and an organza gray skirt that reached her ankles.
Black gloves were necessary as in winters her once frostbitten hands and heels would swell and redden, and her long gloves saved her from embarrassment.
Her first pair of nylon stockings had been a gift from the boyfriend she had met at the dance school on her first day in the city, she and her family lived above the dance school.
