The Lace Neckline

When I was taking my 19th Century class and my Modern art class at BYU, I thought it was fun to look at the styles of clothes that women were wearing in art. There are so many fun details that you can see in the beautiful textiles that are depicted in 19th century, in particular. One style that always caught my eye were high lace necklines. This only really caught my eye cause I thought it was funny that I owned a shirt very similar to it and that the style was kinda popular now, and you can see in the photo below that I am wearing it.  Alfred Stevens in one of my favorite artists of the 19th century. He paints beautiful images of women and his depiction of textiles is dazzling.Alfred Stevens painting The Reader, C.1860 . This beautiful woman sitting reading her book dawns an intricate lace neckline with the beautiful puff sleeve.  You can see how much current fashion has drawn from these old styles, especially when you compare Stevens' painting, La Femme la Harpe, with this Rebecca Taylor shirt. Or, look at these two artworks from the early 1900s. Women Walking on the Beach  and  Clotilde en la playa by Joaquin Soralla. The style of painting here is different, and there is gap in time between this painting and the one made by Alfred Stevens, but there is still this similar lace neckline style.  You can still see a similarity between my blouse and the style of neckline the dresses have in Soralla's paintings.  It is so interesting to see how styles are constantly repeated and remade over time. We can all see that happening with the repetition of Mom jeans from the 90s, and it is fun to see that fashion pulls influence from all the way back to the 19th century. I love fashion and the way it is constantly revamping the old, and then also creating new beautiful styles as well. xoxo Caroline