The 'little florals' that have been
synonymous with Arthur Liberty's London textile house since the 1930s are
showing up on runways this season
The venerable Liberty of London textile
and design company, begun by tastemaker Arthur Liberty in 1875, has
produced a diverse range of prints for over 100 years. But when fashion
people refer to "Liberty prints" in a general sense, they're
usually referring to those small, dense floral patterns often found on
little dresses and high-necked blouses of the Holly-Hobby-gets-lucky
variety.
You've probably heard Liberty prints
mentioned lately because so many designers have been showing Laura Ingalls
Wilder meets hippie flower child on the runways. For spring 2002, Miu Miu
paired flower-strewn shirts with full, calf-length skirts or eyelet
pinafores, and Anna Sui used the fabric for her Twiggyesque tunic mini
dresses.
The "little florals" that
have inadvertently become the house's signature go back to the mid-1930s,
when William Haynes Dorell created a lovely, tightly woven, flowered
cotton called "Tana Lawn." (The yarn came from Tana Lake in
Sudan.) In the 1960s, fabric designer Blair Pride resurrected the pattern
and, thanks to French designers such as Daniel Hechter and Jean Cacharel,
who used it for simple mini shirt-dresses and shirts with white Peter Pan
collars, it became an essential part of the "Swinging London"
look.
In fact, the patterns became so
ubiquitous and widely copied during the Sixties that, according to textile
historian Kathy Cleaver, who curates Ryerson University's vintage clothing
collection, "You would be hard-pressed to find a 19- or 20-year-old
girl's closet without a Liberty print shirt or skirt, though they were
usually copies as the real stuff was expensive." But that isn't to
say it wasn't an equal-opportunity fashion event. London stores such as
Mr. Fish took a radical step with flowered shirts and matching ties made
from Liberty fabrics for the newly emerging preening male peacocks. (This
season, the flower-brave male can look to Miu Miu, where Miuccia Prada
paired floral-print shirts tucked into high-waisted flamenco pants, and
Consuelo Castiglioni's first men's collection for Marni -- although
Castiglioni's cheerful prints borrow as much from the Finnish design
company Marimekko as Liberty.
In the Seventies, Laura Ashley's
versions of the fabric took hold, and forever after, Liberty's little
blooms became indelibly associated with Ashley's brand of homey, frontier
nostalgia.
But when historians of textiles and
taste and perhaps women of a certain age think of Liberty prints, they
also think of the company's much earlier "Anglo-Oriental"
paisleys and chrysanthemums, its seminal art-nouveau designs and the
drapey, no-corset-required clothes made from the fabrics. In the late
1800s, Arthur Liberty's Regent Street shop was at the centre of the new
aesthetic movement. With a taste for anti-Victorian, exotically beautiful
things, Liberty first imported, and then designed, rich but gentle fabrics
that were used in upholstery and to make the radically new pre-Raphaelite
clothes that came to define the period.
Along with the later delicate little
flower prints, this early visionary spirit of Liberty was also referenced
in the spring shows this year, particularly in two of the season's most
lauded. To create his swirling patchwork vests and dresses for Balanciega,
Nicolas Ghesquière commissioned Liberty to remake its India-inspired
prints from the 1890s, "Poonah Thistle" and "Rangoon
Poppy." And Junya Watanabe worked Liberty prints with denim into
organic mollusc-like drapes and folds for his spring women's collection.
In The House of Liberty: Masters of
Style and Decoration, edited by Stephen Calloway, retailing historian
Alison Adburgham claims that, in 1870, Arthur Liberty "firmly
believed ... that a new look in fashion would be brought about by the beau
monde dressing in Liberty Fabrics." Apparently his flowers, and the
beau monde's love for them, are perennial.
- by Miranda Purves Saturday
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