ART & ATTIRE


In a Cafe. Gustave Caillebotte, 1880. Oil on canvas


"Drunken Lovers" by Thomas Rowlandson (1798)


clothing, indicating also how very real the fashion world was from the start. Pre-photography, men in imposing, elegant and


even relaxed tailoring (as depicted, say, by Joseph Wright) celebrated the individuality of the subject of the painting, these works commissioned in the main by aristocrats, celebrities and characters, politicians, men of law and of course, royalty. And whilst most portrait painters shied away from the Cromwellian edict of 'warts and all' they did not slavishly flatter either. Many portraits and paintings of men in elegant modes capture the exactitude of how the garments must have been and the precision regarding how they were worn, the clothing reflecting the sitter's judicious choice and personality. An accurate depiction was the goal and irony not. This is often the very antithesis of photography, especially today. That image often has to convey some irony or a leaden joke to propel the message home. Perhaps August Racinet (1825-1893) who created '


The Costume History' was the most tireless creator of imagery of modes from all over the world. Apart of course from female modes represented, so much male costume, accurately and lavishly drawn is present. In this book by publisher Taschen, Racinet's attention to detail is luxuriously self-evident - his passing coinciding with the era when photography started to


Many portraits and paintings of men in elegant modes capture the exactitude of how the garments must have been and the precision regarding how they were worn, the clothing reflecting the sitter's judicious choice and personality


be increasingly popular to the extent that almost every high street in every town in England boasted a number of photographic studios and the emerging middle classes commissioned images of themselves, as previously only well-heeled and important characters could commission a work in oil. In a sense it was a sign of 'having arrived' at a good station in life. And of course, there was a novelty to this new way of creating visual devices. This writer has sat to a number of portrait


painters, amongst them, Howard Morgan, Sarah Stitt, Binny Mathews, Antonio Pacitti, Phyllis Dupuy and David Remfry all capturing the exacting nature of clothes from a plush velvet coat to a bee-yellow and coffee brown Matsuda blazer, a swallow tail collared shirt 'a Biron' to a jewel-hued, metallic thread Nehru court outfit by Scott Crolla. The clothes provided the narrative and the reason. Some critics have talked about 'the return to painting' given the last couple of decades' fascination with installation work, abstraction and of course, photography. But painting and drawing the male form (not nobly nude in this case) but resplendent in tailoring, capturing the tailor's every detail has never gone away in the first place. It never will. And for this, we do not have to look through a lens - darkly.


SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE 47


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