Pretty Pictures
Suffer for Fashion
I’ll admit it, I am more into clothes than most guys I know. The thrill of finding some weathered, zip-tastic, leather jacket, hidden in a rack full of otherwise unassuming garments elicits an joy probably not dissimilar to a lottery winner upon hearing their numbers being called. OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But for a brief, relatively insignificant period in my life (at least until I find a new one), that jacket makes me feel like a million bucks.
Fashion has long been a channel of expression through which a person could affirm their unique sense of identity, and proclaim their affiliations within the social context of status, beauty, and power. It’s not surprising that so many young girls find the allure of fashion so appealing. What other medium offers such a safe place for a woman to explore the sensitive issues of sexuality and power? Below are the drawings of one such woman, named Ruth Camilleri and her collection of over 1,200 oddly captivating fashion figures from the early 1970s.
What originally caught my eye was the sloppy and disproportionate characteristics of some of her models and the sheer volume of her work, which seems to have been created all within a couple of years time. However, I subsequently learned that fashion design students are taught to “(draw their models) long and slim with squared off shoulders and very unrealistically elongated legs.” Who knew fashion design was so careless and wonderfully crude?!
This collection of work represents either the sketches of a highly driven, working designer, or perhaps the secret portfolio of a passionate housewife expressing herself through the language of contemporary fashion.
More images can be found on the AGHB Flickr Page.
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picture 1: Cape / Wings
70’s Studio 54 Avant-Garde. Conservative / Covering enough to be worn by a drunken and over weight Jackie-O.
picture 2: Umbrella hat / flair sleeves / belt above waiste / vertical crease dress
A Japanese / Russian look for pear shaped women. The sleeves remind me of the top of a Russian building. The hat looks like a Japanese umbrella, cropped and topped.
Picture 4 / last: Daring dress that reminds me of a Vagina. Notice it has a more casual dress of the same style to be worn in lieu of the fantastical one. (minus the vagina ruffle up the middle)
Notice the swirling designs / print on pic 1 and 4. This is very Florence Broadhurst whose designs were simply DOPE! She made wallpaper, eccentric wallpaper, that really stands alone as art now. In fact, many of her wallpaper designs are now beginning to be used as prints for modern fashion. She was murdered in 1977. Mysterious!
This is entirely more interesting than watching project runway. Why? Because here is someone’s inspiration, someone’s art, finally discovered in the landfill of SF flea markets. SF trash is truly treasure.
I think Ms. Camilleri had the concept of “plus size” fashion before it was fashionable. It makes me wonder if she was herself a woman with curves. I imagine her as the bathroom Madonna someone drew on the stall of the Deli where I often got drunk in college. Here is her drawing on your wall now. Somehow I imagine her smiling from wherever she is now. I’ll say it again, this website runs hot and cold with ghosts.