At first glance, fashion and machinery seem to come from very different worlds. While couture is identified by its intensely personal, handmade element, and is designed to fit the figure of a specific client, machinery is its polar opposite, born of post-war mass production and scalable ideas. And yet, throughout the last century, the pages of L’OFFICIEL have shown that luxury fashion and a specific form of machinery—transportation—can often be found side by side, working together to propel similar ideals of glamour and innovation.
At the turn of the 20th century, the marriage between fashion and machinery was direct. New technologies were incorporated into garments through developments in textile manufacturingde Beaumont’s ball in 1924, the eccentric Italian socialite Marchesa Luisa Casati wore Paul Poiret’s “Fountain Dress,” which necessitated a complex design of wiring and pearls. According to the artist Christian Bérard, the Marchesa and Poiret’s attempt at design innovation ended up resembling a “smashed zeppelin.” Some of Casati’s other experimental garments would quite literally go up in smoke thanks to their rudimentary and very literal executions. For example, when Casati attended an event as Saint Sebastian, her armor-like costume—which had been covered with illuminated arrows—had faulty wiring, delivering a powerful electrical shock to the Marchesa.
