Fashion Drawing: Party Dress
At twenty, Ray wrote to her mother declaring that she wanted to earn a living in “commercial art, either advertising or costume design.” Six years later, she wrote again saying that her friend Eleanor McClatchy “told me that ‘Fran’ (Francis Hayes) was to give a concert in February and wanted a costume, so I drew up several designs and sent them to Eleanor—who seemed to like them very much.”
The drawing is signed “Ray Kaiser” in lower right corner.
- Artifact
- A.2019.2.010
- Material
- Ink and graphite on paper
- Artist / Designer
- Ray Kaiser
- Dimensions
- 17 ¹⁵⁄₁₆ × 11 ⅞ in
- 45.6 × 30.2 cm
- Date
- c. 1930
This floor-length, bias-cut evening dress would have been the height of fashion in the late 1920s and early 1930s when Ray was a high school student and a member of the Art Club. It is likely that this illustration was created during a session of the club. It is one of a small number of Ray’s drawings that survive from this period.
The strikingly geometric fabric design of pink, white and black overlapping circles and a large green leaf is repeated and magnified behind the model’s head. As a member of the Art Club Ray would have been exposed to Art Deco, a visual arts style influenced by the geometric forms of Cubism (an art style that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s). The soft, clinging fabric is probably intended to represent a silk faille or crepe—both popular textiles in the 1930s that draped beautifully.
Dale Carolyn Gluckman