Stage Style

The Performing Arts library at Lincoln Centre has an exhibition space which never puts on a bad show.
This one

celbrates the fashion designers who were mainstream couturiers and also dressed the stars of Broadway as a means of advertising their collections.  Here are a few highlights

Mainbocher designed  Mary Martin's wardrobe for "The Sound of Music"

 This gown was so simple as to be a white extension of  Maria's nuns habit.

Fortuny..the inventor of the famous Delphos dress which is never out of fashion designed Shakespearian gowns for  Isadora Duncan

and  Julia Marlowe as Portia in MERCHANT OF VENICE.  These were too beautiful to not sneak a snap.

Other fashion houses represented were Lucile Ltd. This London based house was created by Lady Duff Gordon who with her husband, Sir Cosmo, managed to escape the Titanic disaster in a lifeboat full  of her maid and her clothes and jewels and not much else.

Here is one of her designs for a fur worn by a very obscure Broadway stage star called Ann Andrews

The actual coat itself (1900's) was breathtakingly beautiful..so much so that I now wholly support the fur industry including the skinning of live baby furs.

Here is the mysterious Ann Andrews in a fine creation for a play she was in that nobody who saw it is alive to tell.  So I shall suggest that it was called,   " A Mid Spring Madness"

Irene Castle was half of a famous ballroom dancing act with her husband, Vernon. She designed her own gowns and licensed them in the hundreds to department stores all over America.

There were cases of gowns worn by such stars as Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Judy Holliday, Lillian Gish and Gertrude Lawrence. And separate cases devoted to opera and dance creations.

The catalogue included a cut-out doll featuring costume designs worn by Miss Elsie Ferguson in a variety of roles. I thought they would make a nice feature in the apartment so I put three hours aside for quiet and detailed construction.
Here they are before being assembled:

and here are the stages leading up to completion. Gosh I slaved.

Step 1

Step 2

Step3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

And here is Miss Ferguson in the final ensemble