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Charles James
Charles James is fashion’s best-kept secret.Though largely unknown to the general public, he is one of the most hugely admired countries within the fashion world itself. The inventor in the 1930s of American haute couture, his special talent was to combine the science of design with the eroticism of fashion. With his magnificent sculpture dresses he created an ideal of female beauty. A difficult, temperamental man, James died poor and unfeted, but his work has continued to bewitch, influence and inspire subsequent generations of designers.
Charles Wilson Brega James
Born in 1906, James was a fashion independent and polymath in the manner of other beguiling mavericks such an Elizabeth Hawes and Cecil Beaton. He was a British born fashion designer known as “America’s First Couturier”. A master of cutting, James is most famous for his sumptuous ballgowns and highly structured aesthetic. James is one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century and continues to influence new generations of designers.
He was a fashion independent and polymath in the manner of the beguiling mavericks such as Elizabeth Hawes and Cecil Beaton. He celebrated the world and purposefully sought out beauty, but he could also be cynical, caustic and malicious. Hawes exorcised her fashion demons in elegant and witty writing; Beaton’s brittle address to society was so polix that his slurs, even the famous ones, went largely forgiven; but James was mean and aggressive, even to those who tried to be friend with him and with his work. James was more intimate with the fashion world. He despised many of the business practices of fashion as commerce; he was admired, if less well-known, in the art world, where such patrons as Millicent Rogers, Ausitnes Hearst, Dominique de Menil and Mrs Fritz Bultmann acted as graceful intermediaries and Antonio, the illustrator, served for a long time as most eloquent delineator. Had James actually been involved in the art world, it is likely that he would have worn out his welcome there as well. But those in the fashion world whose primary acquaintance was with the clothing rather than the designer found themselves able to give high praise to his work, as Christian Dior did, calling his designs ‘poetry’.
Early life
James’ father, Ralph Ernest Haweis James, was a British army officer and instructor at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. His mother, Louise Enders Brega, came from a wealthy Chicagoan family. In 1919, he attended Harrow School, where he met Evelyn Waugh, Francis Cyril Rose, and, most importantly, Cecil Beaton, with whom he formed a longstanding friendship. He was expelled from Harrow for a “sexual escapade”.
After that, James briefly studied music at the University of Bordeaux in France, before he was sent to Chicago to work. The utilities magnate Samuel Insull, a friend of the family, found him a position at the “architectural design department”, where he acquired the mathematical skills that later enabled him to create the sophisticated gowns for which he was famous.
At the age of nineteen, in 1926, James opened his first milliner shop in Chicago, using the name of “Charles Boucheron”, as his disapproving father forbade him to use that of James.
How did he become iconic?
In 1928, he left Chicago for Long Island with 70 cents, a Pierce Arrow, and a number of hats as his only possessions. He later opened a millinery shop above a garage in Murray Hill, Queens, New York, beginning his first dress designs. At the time, he presented himself as a “sartorial structural architect”. By 1930, he had designed, or “shaped” as he preferred to say, the spiral zipped dress and the taxi dress.
CHARLES JAMES TAXI DRESS (1932)
From New York James moved to London, setting up shop in Mayfair. He designed the wedding dress for ‘Baba’ (Barbara) Beaton, Cecil Beaton’s sister, for her marriage to Alec Hambro on November 6, 1934. James created a very modern interpretation of the white wedding dress, with a raised neckline and divided train. In 1936, he established the company Charles James (London) Ltd., using his own name officially for the first time.
WEDDING DRESS FOR ‘BABA’ (BARBARA) BEATON (NOVEMBER 6, 1934)
James also spent time in Paris in the early 1930s, working from the Hôtel Lancaster. He showed his first collection in the French capital in 1937. That same year, he created a one-of-a-kind white satin quilted jacket described by Salvador Dali as “the first soft sculpture”, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collections. This jacket has been considered the starting point for “anoraks, space man and even fur jackets”. In the 1930s, he also invented the Pavlovian waistband that expands after a meal.
Meanwhile, he licensed his fashion designs with American department stores such as Lord & Taylor and Bergdorf Goodman.
James moved permanently to New York in 1939, where he established Charles James, Inc. At the end of the Second World War, he designed a clothing line for Elizabeth Arden.
In 1947, James showed one of his most successful collections in Paris. The following year, Millicent Rogers organized an exhibition of the outfits he made for her at the Brooklyn Museum, entitled A Decade of Design for Mrs Millicent H. Rogers by Charles James. Also in 1948, Cecil Beaton famously photographed eight of James creations for Vogue.
A DECADE OF DESIGN FOR Mrs. MILLICENT H. ROGERS BY CHARLES JAMES
James was at the height of his career in the early 1950s. At that time, he spent most of his time in New York at his 699 Madison Avenue workshop. Reaching the pinnacle of American fashion, he won two Coty Awards, in 1950 and 1954, and one Neiman Marcus Award in 1953. That year he conceived the “Four-Leaf Clover” or “Abstract” ballgown for the journalist Austine Hearst. It was the dress James ranked as his best creation. This dress weighed no less than 12 pounds and had to be supported by a rigid structure. James indeed had an iconoclastic approach to dressmaking.
THE “FOUR-LEAF CLOVER” or “ABSTRACT” FOR THE JOURNALIST.
James looked upon his dresses as works of art, as did many of his customers. Year after year, he reworked original designs, ignoring the sacrosanct schedule of seasons. The components of the precisely constructed designs were interchangeable, so that James had a never-ending fund of ideas on which to draw. He is most famous for his sculpted ball gowns made of lavish fabrics and to exacting tailoring standards, but is also remembered for his capes and coats, often trimmed with fur and embroidery.
After returning to New York City from Paris, Arnold Scaasi worked for James for two years.
What was the fashion of that decade?
James was one of the few Anglo-American designers to work in the tradition of classical couture. James is best known for his extravagant evening dresses, one of his greatest achievements was his coats and capes, may inspired by North African capes and caftans. In such instances, his usual construction is often restrained in favor of capes as loose as a caftan or wraps with dolman sleeves. In a 1949 drawing for a Chesterfield coat, James expertly inserts pockets in the seams and demonstrates the seam lines that rises to its uppermost at centre front. A box pleat at the back allows for a fluidity of movement that is not apparent from the front. In dresses, James would often hide a pleat within the construction to allow for some flex, but here he makes the softness apparent, if only at the back.
Jame’s 1930’s coats are like those of many of his contemporaries, including Gres and Lanvin, minimally constructed to sweep with a ribbony openness.
His late 1930s ‘Ribbon’ evening cape is a petal shape with ribbons and wings. Many stand-up collars reflect the circular gyration of the coat’s pattern pieces, continuing Gres’ tailoring with dressmaker-like pliant pieces forced into three-dimensionality.
“Taxi” dress of around 1929-30, a spiral wrapped dress said to be so easy to wear that it can be put on in the back seat of a taxi. Bias-cut cloth wraps the body one and a half times, closing first with clasps and in later versions with a zipper. This dress, in the manner of Vionnet, Valentina and Gres was largely abandoned by James and its ideas were pursued in the coats until, in the 1960s and 1970s James returned to these simple studies in bias. The James-Halston collaborations at this time ended in bitter dispute over such designs, but it seems certain that James was st least an intermediary and an inspiring force who awakened Halston to the bias drape and body consciousness of the 1930s.
His ‘Sirene’ evening dress of around 1938, which he repeated in 1955-56, renewed the suppleness of both his own 1930s dresses and those of other designers.Here,small areas of manipulated cloth fall into into slinky rhythms of movement as the wearer moves, the effect being almost like that of an animals skin.
A grand ballgown with empire waist leading toward a prominent curved polonaise deeply descending in the front, but rising up toward the back. The dress threatens to lose form altogether in billowing scale, but James swoops the polonise down to recover the shape of what appears to be an under skirt below.
The ‘Lampshade’ evening gown 1953 is exemplary of the interest James showed from 1948 through the 1950s in kicking out to a wide circumference only at the knee, keeping the hips tightly wrapped. In ‘Lampshade’, a reminder of Paul Poiret’s designs in the 1910s, James devised a figure –eight knee-line flounce, enhancing the silhouette of a strapless
filled bodies, padded hips with clinging drapery, and the wide lengthening below the knee.
The ‘Tulip’ ballgown (1949) had proposed a similar silhouette with wide flounce. Initially, James achieved the volume of the flounce through boning, but later versions of the 1950s as construction lightened in all fashion,
eliminated the boning as too severe and traditional. It may also have been restrictive to walking and certainly added to the weight of the dress.
He referred to nature as his source, but he actually created a scenic, picturesque effect. In the late 1940s and 1950s, many of his designs were named after living things, including the ‘Patel’, ‘Swan’, ‘Tulip’, ‘Butterfly’, ‘Four-Leaf Clover’ and ‘Tree’ dresses. From this it might seem as though James were an indefatigable naturalist, but a study of his drawings for these and similar gowns indicates otherwise. James is true to nature only in essence, in the manner of the sculptor constantin Brancusi or the painter-sculptor Jean Arp. James seeks toabsorb the essential from nature, not the complications of the real world. He seeks quintessential and reductive form, perceiving giant areas in cloves or tressbabd grand crescents and semicircles in flowers as applicable to the human body. To be sure, there there is an organic certainly in Jmae’s referencing of the natural forms, but his ambition is to make these forms abstract . Jame’s arresting drawings-often on crude, lined notepapers-conceive of overriding shapes and grand gestures.
Yet James did not execute his dresses wholly in the abstract spirit of his inspired drawings. Another great dressmaker recognized the effort involved;Balenciaga praised him, saying, ‘Charles James is not only the most eminent American couturier, but also the best, and the only one in the world who has raised haute couture from an applied art form to a pure art form.’ Balenciaga himself was a master of form that could both cling to the body and stand on its own away from the body by virtue of the strength of the fabric or of the inner structure.
Charles James possessed a great love for the grand and the magnificent. He expressed this passion through his formal eveningwear.In October 1946, ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ carried a feature on his work.They noted that even before the House Of Dior was founded, James was promoting “a renewed magnificence” in the world of the Couture. One of Cecil Beaton’s legendary photographs from the same year shows nine women resplendent in Charles James ball gowns, surrounded by a room displaying equally opulent 18th century architecture. The theme is mirrored in the gowns, with their beautiful icey and pastel hues. Combined with the asymmetrical necklines, strapless and contrast bodices, and deep décolletages, are the most luxurious and beautiful fabrics.The mood is undoubtedly one of overt luxury and splendor. Designer Marc Jacobs has commented that James “Understood human nature; how people want to adorn themselves, and be spectacular.” Nancy James mentioned the way that James produced his shows: “Charles did not make regular collections as they do in Paris. Perhaps this was for the best, as the unique results he obtained by fitting clients himself were not suited to large shows. He made one or two ranges for Samuel Winston, a coat collection for ‘Dressmaker Casuals’ (for which he won the Coty award), as well as baby wear, belt, and jewellery lines. He also produced maternity clothes for Lane Bryant, for which he was listed in ‘Who’s Who’. I always thought that he was a good businessman, but he never found anyone to capitalise him, as is done in Paris. Although he always worked from home, and had staff come over, as well as use the workroom, I never felt that I was involved with his work. In his own salon he had two special people who helped him – Miss Kate Peil, who was the head of his workroom, and James Somerville, who helped on the business side. They were both with him for many Years.”
PETAL DRESS
SWAN DRESS
BUTTERFLY DRESS
TREE DRESS
How did they influence fashion?
Charles Jmaes one of the most significant fashion designers of the 20th century, James inspired many fashion personalities, including Christian Dior who said that he was “the greatest talent of my generation”. Christian Dior is said to have credited James with inspiring The New Look. Cristóbal Balenciaga portrayed James as “the only dressmaker who has raised [fashion] from an applied art to a pure art form”.[citation needed]
In the 2017 film Phantom Thread, Reynolds Woodcock is loosely based on James; director Paul Thomas Anderson had become interested in the fashion industry after reading about Balenciaga.
But James wasn’t just a dressmaker to the stars, he saw himself as an artist and a sculptor. His masterpieces were often unfathomably complex his most iconic dress, THE CLOVER LEAF BALL GOWN, weighed ten pounds and used thirty pattern pieces alone.
A master manipulator, James was also combining textiles and distressing materials long before it became trendy.He mixed velvet, satin, taffeta and tulle and was a master of cut and cloth. If not for his technical wizardy, his dress would have been unwearable- but society ladies glided across the dance floor with ease. His persistence and dedication were the stuff made of legends.
But it wasn’t just old-fashioned ball gowns and frocks.James was also an inventive visionary.His talent was tempered by a foul temper and mean streak. James once dismissed a prospective customer with the words, “I couldn’t possibly make anything for a frump like you”Legendary photographer Cecil Beaton attended Harrow with James, and wrote in his diary. “His talent was marvelous, his wit bitter.no one could cope with his temperament for long”.
DID FASHION OF THAT ERA INFLUENCE THEM?
‘Charles James had nothing to do with fashion. Rather, he applied himself to the rigors of mathematics in the creation of fashion.’ Two years later, in 1928, he moved to New York City with 70 cents and opened a fashion design studio in a Long Island garage – later moving into a residence in Murray Hill, Queens. I was then that James began conceptualizing his sartorial innovations while shuttling between London and New York City. In 1929, he designed his now-famous taxi dress- a gown that, while intricate in appearance, was constructed so that a woman could easily slip it on in the back of a taxi.
Over the next 20 years James’s designs caught the eyes of social swans in New York and abroad, by offering couture services through stores including Harrods and Bergdorf Goodman. But throughout his success, Mr James’s lacking business skills landed him and his label in a flood of financial difficulties.
But James managed to license his name to brands including Elizabeth Arden and B. Altman, for which he created mass-produced lines in a ploy to recover some cash.
In 1948, James’s social notoriety lead to a Cecil Beaton fashion shoot for Vogue, which produced the most famous images of James’s work in existence. Placed on society swans in an 18th century French room, Vogue’s image displays how James’s designs were not all that different from Rococo fashions, as both highlight femininity through exaggerated form.
He once said of his creations: ‘My structures…look as if the body is no more ambulatory than a mermaid’s yet permit large reckless movement.’ The two created a joint runway collection in 1970 which was widely panned, representing James’s last major stab at fashion design. Eight years later, in 1978, he died of pneumonia in the Chelsea Hotel, completely penniless.
ANALYSIS
Like many designers trying to survive in the 1930’s, Charles James struggled to keep his business afloat. He understood the need for distraction that many people felt during World War II. He provided this distraction to the fashion world with his glamorous designs; even ignoring war restrictions. His fabrics were eye-catching, not because of their loud prints or extravagant and bold details but because of his construction and superb ability to drape. The 1950’s were about innovations and prosperity. James took advantage of this time to pay attention to his biggest clients, Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Jr. and Millicent Huddleston Rogers, both women who were able to pay for his extremely high priced garments at the peak of his success. His choice to use capitalism to his advantage was a reflection of the times he lived in. Charles James left a great impact on the fashion world despite his turbulent career, “His fellow fashion designers, potentially his most severe critics, left no question regarding their assessment of his talent. Poiret passed his mantle to James, and Schiaparelli and Chanel dressed in his clothes. Dior praised him for being the inspiration for the New Look, and Balenciaga saw James as the greatest and best American couturier; moreover, he believed that James was the only couturier who had raised dressmaking from an applied to a pure art form,” states Coleman. Though his perfectionism and inability to give up ownership of his designs after he sold them, was potentially what ended his career very early, it may also be what made him an incredible designer. He had an attention to detail that never wavered despite the immense amount of designs he created each season. He never needed to over-embellished with too much color, print or sparkles; the cut of his designs, the seams on his gowns, were so artfully draped and constructed, they alone are what made him an icon.
His superb draping for the feminine figure, his impeccable construction, and his attention to detail. Many designers from Schiaparelli and Chanel, whom wore his clothes, to Dior and Balenciaga whom honored his designs as art; consider James an incredible couturier.
Charles James has inspired many designers since the peak of his career in the mid-20th Century. Hints of his aesthetic can be seen in designs coming down the runway almost every season from Oscar de la Renta to Alexander McQueen. For fall 2012 especially, Zac Posen’s collection is inspired by James and Balenciaga, according to Vogue Magazine’s Andre Leon Talley. In the Vogue article, they even have a photograph by Cecil Beaton of many of James’ gowns that defined his career. This photograph continues to influence designers today and will in the future. His aesthetic and construction are hard to match and if you asked him, no other designer could ever come close to his talent. His timelessness is something designers try to recreate but often fall short of his talent. His silhouettes have withstood the test of time and will continue to do so as long as femininity and classic glamour remain a trend in fashion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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