In March, to present his fall-winter 2022-2023 collection, Olivier Theyskens chose the Palais de Chaillot, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1937. “The place seemed just right to me, with its old-fashioned elegance… You can imagine that a whole glamorous jet-set that escaped from a crash was circulating there”, explains the designer. What better backdrop indeed to show off 26 masterful silhouettes inspired by the 1930s ? They looked like, Theyskens realized, they were straight out “pictures of George Hoyningen-Huene”, a fashion photographer who worked for vogue at this time.
Would the 1930s be making a comeback? ? The question has become a commonplace as the economic and political context resonates. Liberalism, nationalist withdrawal… Many people, like Emmanuel Macron in 2018, see a “resemblance between the moment we are living in and that of the interwar period”… In 2019, with his essay Recidivism. 1938 (PUF), the philosopher Michaël Fœssel had even undertaken to shed light on the news in the light of a particular year of this decade. “1938 appeared to me as a ghost: a being whose essence is to return, but in a modified form”, he writes.
dusty decade
Fashion, always ready to unearth a dusty or decried decade, rewinds in turn. Granted, most designers today are obsessed with the vulgar pop of the year 2000, but some are gleefully, and more subtly, digging into the 1930s. Lamentation, by Martha Graham (1930), at Saint Laurent; the painter Giacomo Balla at Bottega Veneta; the model Renée Perle, lover and subject of Jacques-Henri Lartigue, at Max Mara… The artists of this period feed the proposals of today.
“The correspondences are numerous, highlights British designer Erdem Moralioğlu. In addition to the mixture of androgyny and theatrical glamour, there is economic turbulence and, of course, the return of war. A war on our continent, never perhaps my generation would have thought to see that in their lifetime…” The painter Jeanne Mammen, the dancer Valeska Gert, the photographer Madame d’Ora and others: Moralioğlu explored the allure of forgotten artists to perfect his jacquard suits, his Fortuny pleats, his cabaret dresses devoured with sequins.
Because, just like plunging necklines (bust or back) and long dresses, reflective surfaces are “ typical of the 1930s, recalls Teresa Collenette, curator at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, who devoted an exhibition to this period in 2019. “Because of the Great Depression, she continues, sequins are machine-embroidered and rayon replaces silk. But these scintillating and satiny materials are omnipresent, suggesting both Art Deco and the fascination with the cinema screen. » The Hollywood glamor of this era is reborn this season by Halpern and Rick Owens, both of whom are inspired by the cinema of Cecil B. DeMille.
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