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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