gruau master of ink

i was fortunate to visit dior illustrated, rené gruau and the line of beauty at somerset house in january. this exceptional illustrator worked with dior from the 40's to the late 1980's and mostly drew for the dior perfumes, despite this being a time when fashion houses were turning to photography for their advertising. dior met gruau when they both worked on the fashion desk at le figaro in 1936, from then on the two men had a lasting friendship and working partnership.

responding to the zeitgeist but with a strong individual style he produced some of the most iconic images in fashion (and even appeared in the dior cook book)

truly gruau was the master of the minimal, conveying so much with only the few strokes of a brush:

miss dior, 1971

miss dior, 1961

diorissmo, 1959. from a series known as the flower women

miss dior, 1949 the hand of mitzah bricard (muse to dior)

it had to be horrockses

i recently had a lovely afternoon looking at old photos with my granny. granny brown had so many beautiful printed dresses, of those she hadn't made herself a few special pieces were horrockses. horrockses fashions was established in 1946 as a ready-to-wear women's wear brand and encompassed day, evening and beach wear. horrockses were particularly clever with marketing, regularly advertising in vogue (at the time filled with couture) and being worn by well known models and many in the royal family. dresses were covered in distinctive prints, designed by contemporary artist such as eduardo paolozzi and graham sutherland.

i visited the horrockses exhibition at the fashion and textiles museum (which if you miss look out for the book written by the exhibitions curator christine boydell) filled with great examples from the archives. i particularly liked the bikini and play suits and of course the beautiful prints, my favorites including a green and yellow banana print and crazy 50's atomic styles.

an illustrated fashion advertisement, vogue june 1949

hand painting in the design studio

princess margaret in her horrockses dress 1956. fabric designed by louise le brocquy

70's sanderson

following my post on the sanderson exhibition i did a little exploring through my magazine collection and found these great photos used by sanderson during the 70's to advertise their designs. i particularly like the poppy design in the middle with great bold colours and scale.