Liberation from the Corset

With its thin, pleated silk , Delphos was originally a ‘tea gown’, intended for informal gatherings.

‘It was probably not meant as an evening gown, but people ended up using it as that’, says Arnesen.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, women wore corsets and various types of padding to manipulate their body shape and clothing, but during the 1920s these practices waned. Several parallel tendencies caused the fashion scene to change.

‘If you want the standard narrative, then this is liberation from the corset’, declares Arnesen.

Sports and leisure become popular; now one is supposed to be active, healthy and fit. What is the healthy, natural body like, and how can it be used as the basis for making clothes? This creates a backlash against the corset and the manipulation of the body. There is, at the same time, enormous interest in clothing from other parts of the world, particularly Japan. The simple Delphos adapts to the wearer’s body, and with its historical references, it glides right into the fashion scene. It is sold in shops in New York, Paris and London.

Arnesen is nevertheless somewhat critical of liberation from the corset:
‘This dress, without supporting undergarments, requires a perfect body. You can very well call it a liberation , but it’s of course not a liberation for all body types.’

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo dies in 1949, and Henriette Nigrin ceases all creative production. She uses the last 16 years of her life to catalogue, organise and donate works and objects from her husband’s estate. She donates Palazzo Orfei to the municipality of Venice, so it can become a museum. Nigrin also ends production of the dresses she has created, among others, Delphos.

‘It is not until Nigrin ceases production that the dress dies’, says Arnesen.

Afterwards, it is Fortuny who has received all the credit for it. He is the one about whom books are written and research is conducted, and it is his name that is on museum labels, also in the National Museum in Norway.

Hidden Secrets

Conservator Eva Düllo dons blue rubber gloves and switches on the lamp over the table where the peach-coloured silk dress lies. The dress has been without oxygen for four weeks, and now she can finally study it.

Even though the auction house in England sold the dress as ‘unmarked’, she discovers something inside one of the ribbons on the inside.

‘Look here!’ She carefully unfolds the ribbon, which is no wider than a fingernail.

Inside is a hand-painted label with red letters: ‘Fortuny’. The band has been used to tighten up the dress under the arms, and Düllo thinks it may have been replaced or added sometime after the dress was new.

‘It has a different colour than the silk of the dress’, she says as she displays it, ‘and the seam is a bit frayed.’

The dress comes with a belt, and here new snap buttons have been added. The dress is in good condition, but it shows signs of wear. It has some stains, but Düllo says the practice of washing garments in the conservation process has almost completely stopped. Instead, the wisdom is to preserve traces of a lived life .

The cord holding the dress together over the shoulders is a bit fragile, so Düllo inserts a new thin cord that can bear the weight of the fabric, yet without removing the original cord.

‘It’s unthinkable to replace the original cord’, says Düllo. ‘The new one ensures that the original isn’t destroyed.’