Stealth Brand: Judith Leiber's Leather Bags

In the pursuit of truly spectacular vintage pieces--at prices that are within real-life budgets--it's usually best to think laterally.

For example: a mint-condition 1950s Dior suit rarely comes on the secondhand market for less than thousands of dollars. Ensembles such as these are museum pieces. Given their importance as historical paradigms, compounded by their rarity, the four-figure price is reasonable. Yet one can readily find a smashing Dior hat from the same period, of equal historical import and aesthetic merit, for under $100.

Another example. Mikimoto, the Japanese firm that pioneered the culturing of pearls, remains the industry's top practitioner. A vintage string of smallish pearls from the 1960s will fetch a price of $600 or more. But their scarves, which are brilliantly printed and crafted, and to my mind of no lesser value than those of Ferragamo and Gucci (if not quite up to the unsurpassed quality of Hermès), typically sell for under $30 on the rare occasions they come up on eBay.

Mikimoto=pearls. Dior=dresses, suits, gowns. Anything that deviates from the house's front-of-the-house products are less covetable to the vast herd of buyers. In no way does it mean that they are less brilliant, or beautiful, or fantastically made.

This is also the case, I believe, with the vintage leather bags of Judith Leiber.

Since most of us can't make it out to the family's museum and showplace garden in East Hampton, Long Island, here is the quick version of the lady's story. A Hungarian Jew, she diverted from Cambridge University studies in chemistry to become the first female member of Budapest's handbag guild. Evading the Holocaust, she married an artistic Yank soldier who brought her to the States, where she helped fund his printmaking pursuits with a small cottage industry making handbags. The firm went on to become one of the premium luxury-goods manufacturers in America, best known for its minaudières (pronounced minnow-dee-air). These metal-shell evening bags are encrusted with thousands of crystals, taking the form of glimmering beasts, Buddhas, hand-holdable replicas of famous works on canvas, and countless other bijou incarnations.

These little bags have become cultural signifiers, held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian, and on the wrists at society functions, where mere multicarat gemstones are dimmed by their supernova sparkle. (Luxuriating in the company's website, I became especially enchanted with the little apple above. Wear this with a glimmering nude silk jersey gown, and every man in the room is Adam to your Eve. But I digress . . . )

While jewelboxes like these sell in the thousands even secondhand, the firm's leather bags, which are equally well crafted, rarely meet that same lofty mark, simply because in most buyer's minds, Leiber=crystal, and that's that.

But isn't this Leiber bag, of aqua lambskin, just smashing as well? And its cost, while steep for an everyday purchase, is extraordinarily reasonable given that its style and quality surpass most of what's going for ten times that amount in department stores at the moment.

So, this entry is a fairly roundabout way of saying that if you want to find a brilliant buy for well under actual value, think out of the minaudière.

More examples with different sorts of items later this week.

(many thanks to Konasesame for the leather clutch image, Leiber apple above from the company's website, judithleiber.com)

But He Seams Straight: John Galliano for Christian Dior

For all of Galliano's flamboyant showmanship (and occasional nonsense with half-dressed models), the man upholds the Dior heritage of tailoring with the reverence the name deserves.

Look here at this wonderful Prince-of-Wales houndstooth check suit, shown in the August Paris Vogue. It's so neatly tailored it would make Wallis Simpson weep in her grave, for the fact of being too dead to wear it.

Click on the picture to see more detail--the crossover double-breasted fashioning looks effortless, but must have been the devil to effect. Even more impressive is the meticulous pattern matching across the front opening, and across the shoulder area and arms. If there is a shoulder seam, I can't see it--it's that good.

I've talked about pattern matching before, and how reliable an indicator it is of exquisite attention to detail on the part of a design team. Recently, I bought a vintage Valentino Miss V jacket on eBay for $30/£18 for this very reason.

I loved the fact that the Romans had a go with a motif that is essentially Central Asian. The wool fabric would be right at home in a seraglio of some regional warlord, retired after pillaging the West.


As such, it's a bit of a pain finding the right bottom half to balance it. It's a bruiser of a pattern, begging for a fight with another one, or to be muzzled under layers of shawls. Ideally I'd wear it with dusty blue suede trousers, or possibly a pair of pyjama-y silk cigarette pants in a smaller-grade paisley, whose colors complement those in the jacket.

Since I have neither, I'll probably wear it with dark denim jeans. It's possible that the workers who sewed this jacket--as complex as the piecework is--actually had an easier time matching it than I will.

(photo top Inez Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for Paris Vogue, styled by Carine Roitfeld)

Anatomy of a Masterpiece III: The Headdress

For master couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, the hat was just that. His adornments for the head were as meticulously conceived and executed as the wraps around the rest of the body. Each of his hats, assembled on the premises of his atelier by Mme Janine or Hélène, was designed to complement a specific outfit, so that the entirety of the look became a mobile sculpture.

Among his most dramatic hats was this wingspan creation of 1948. (John Galliano liked it so much he paid homage in Dior's Fall 2009 Couture line.)



Less dramatic, indeed rather introspective, is the velvet beret Balenciaga used to top off the suit below, from 1950. Perhaps he felt its soft folds and rather frivolous tassel provided a necessary antidote to the strict lines of the suit underneath.


It's possible, too, that his own self-image as an artist of cloth was coming to the fore--this style of beret is less akin to those worn by Balenciaga's Basque countrymen as that worn by another quiet genius, Rembrandt, in numerous self-portraits painted in his chilly northern studio.



(photograph top: Clifford Coffin for American Vogue, 1 April 1948. Photo of Dior Couture Autumn 2009 by Monica Feuidi/Gorunway.com/Style.com. Balenciaga suit photograph: photographer unknown, for Vogue, 1950. Rembrandt self-portrait 1634, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)

Anatomy of a Masterpiece: Cristóbal Balenciaga

Something a bit different: I'd like to spend the next few days discussing the suit above, a masterwork by Cristóbal Balenciaga. A quick note on the image itself: it's been attributed on the web as a shot for Vogue--whether American, British, or French is unclear. It looks like early Irving Penn, again an uncertain provenance. The suit almost certainly dates to 1950. I hope to provide more details over the course of the next few days.

In the meantime, today's focus is on the most extraordinary aspect of the silhouette: the wasp waist. This was achieved with disciplined corsetry and padding added to the lower portion of the jacket to emphasize the curve of the hips. The detail was originated by Christian Dior as part of his famed "New Look" of 1947. "I wanted to employ a different technique in fashioning my clothes," Dior said, ". . . I wanted them to be constructed like buildings."

Balenciaga adopted the silhouette and added a detail which is a subtle feat of tailoring: a front panel that effectively converted a single-breasted jacket from the waist up into a double-breasted one below.

Nicolas Ghesquiere, now fashion director at the house, took this silhouette as inspiration for his Spring/Summer '08 line, here modeled by Natalia Vodianova.

Will today's image-stricken women ever embrace a mode that emphasizes the curves of the hips? I very much hope so--minus the corset, of course--for what a voluptuous look this is.

Femme en Fleur in Cuir

Used this excellent book for some research yesterday. It was sitting on the floor, next to the desk, and my eye kept wandering back to the cover. Yes, Nadja Auermann is extraordinarily beautiful, but it was the leather jacket that kept me looking again and again. And then I realized why.



Its cut is New Look, via Dior (illustrated here a follow-on suit by Hattie Carnegie), one of my favorite silhouettes ever, with its wasp waist, ultrafeminine rounded hips, and jacket hem that hits below the pelvis. Three-quarter sleeves and artfully placed pockets add dynamism to its iconic (in the fertile-female sense) form.

Why not revisit in leather? It's a reminder that when he's not totally occupied with brandvertising, Karl Lagerfeld (the jacket is Chanel, '95) can be a genius.