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06-03-2012
At Museum of Vancouver, a dalliance with art deco dresses
Imagine time-travelling back to depression-era Vancouver just as rum runner and millionaire George Reifel opens the Commodore Cabaret, now the Commodore Ballroom, for the first time. It is the biggest nightclub in Vancouver,Plus size mother of the bride dresses and its art deco design and sprung dance floor have been the talk of the town for weeks. The December 1930 grand opening features an 11-piece orchestra and sumptuous full-course dinner for a sold-out crowd of 1,500 people. You are one of them. What will you wear?
With the economy in a tailspin, you can't afford a new dress so you pull out one you bought two years before. It's a flapper dress embellished with thousands of shiny black sequins and glass beads machine-stitched onto silk mesh. It is classic art deco style very fancy surface on a simple shape. The beaded fringe hem draws attention to your legs as you dance and the beadwork presses against your frame, hinting at the beauty beneath. It's a bit short for the year, but it still feels stylish.Now this dress is part of a 60-item exhibit of art deco fashion spanning the 1920s and 30s. Curated by fashion historians Ivan Sayers and Claus Jahnke, it opens this Thursday at the Museum of Vancouver.
And were it in better shape, you could easily wear the dress to the Commodore or an art gallery opening today. Many of the other exquisite dresses with labels such as Chanel, Lanvin, Vionnet, Patou, and Schiaparelli would fit with red carpet styles of this season.It could be that everything in fashion comes around again. Or it could be pop culture's influence 1929-based period film The Artist just won best picture, and a remake of The Great Gatsby comes out later this year but art deco styles, be they bead work or geometric designs, are showing up everywhere. Even the backdrop for the Academy Awards was in the genre.
