A Study of Fashionable Silk Veiling, Maline, and Tulle from 1904

 

by

Joanne Dolan

 

A group of silk net, veiling, tulle, and maline, all sheer draping fabrics produced in unique patterns and colors is the subject of this paper. They form part of a larger collection of materials in a variety of fabrications consisting of raffia, feathers, paper, horsehair, sequins, and chenille.  The amassed group is contained in a sample book dated Printemps 1904, and suggests that it may have served as a millinery swatch service book.  I intend to focus only on the silk draping materials and examine their fabrication, design, and use in millinery during the first decade of the twentieth century. In addition I will draw comparisons to their geometric designs with the universality of geometry as a source of pattern.

 

The millinery fashion and trade press of 1904 and 1905 reveal the degree of novelty that was in demand at that time.  The importation of silk veiling into the United States reached an all time high in the years 1904 and 1905.  I aim to reveal that the importation of silk veiling was very specific to millinery and these importation records reflect the changing taste in millinery silks.

 

Joanne Dolan is an associate curator in the textile collection at the Museum at FIT in New York.  She has helped curate and coordinate several exhibitions at the museum such as, A Woman’s Hand: Designing Textiles in America, 1945-1969, Monumental and Intimate: The Tapestries of Helena Hernmarck, and Beads and Sequins, Scintillating Fashion. She has consulted on exhibitions outside of MFIT, such as the Festival of Mongolia’s Mongolian Nomads: A Tradition of Survival, and Guggenheim Museum’s Giorgio Armani Retrospective. She also teaches the history of western textiles at FIT’s School of Graduate Studies.  She presented a paper on WPA textiles at TSA’s 1998 Symposium.  She has her B.A. in Art History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her M.A. from S.U.N.Y. FIT.