Reproducing a period article discussing how costume is an expression of an actress personality and may be used to convey emotion.
(Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 8th January 1911)
CLOTHES AND THE WOMAN
Garments that Express Temperament - Mme Bernhardt's Gorgeous Chinchilla Cloak - Billie Burke the Daintiest Actress - Personality Evidenced by Fabric and Frills
Garments that Express Temperament - Mme Bernhardt's Gorgeous Chinchilla Cloak - Billie Burke the Daintiest Actress - Personality Evidenced by Fabric and Frills
The essential difference between the actress and the ordinary woman, as far as clothes are concerned, is that the actress allows her garments to express her personality, whilst the ordinary woman - in most instances - tries to live up to her clothes.
How many of us have not come out of the theater under the spell of a strong and brilliant personality on the stage thinking "I'll have a gown just like that. I'll look like that.
I'll act like that. I'll be like that." But alas! though a good memory and a little trouble may indeed duplicate for us the gown, it will never seem to have the same meaning, the same indescribable charm that made the real gown a part of the woman who wore it.
Every actress, if she is a great enough actress, sets a fashion at some time or other in her career. There are actresses who set many fashions, and they are not always the actresses with the most vivid personalities either. Some little detail of dress like a collar, a necktie, a belt, the way a hat is tipped, or a parasol is carried, if essentially charming nnd becoming will be seized upon and imitated until behold! it appears almost overnight in the department stores, ticketed "The Elsie Janis belt," the "Marie Cahill doll," the "Peter Pan shirtwaist," the "Ethel Barrymore earring," the "Mary Mannering curl," and becomes a fashion.
The Great Actress, All Things to All Costumes
One reason of the charm and meaning in the actress clothes as contrasted with those of the ordinary woman is that the actress is forever being a different woman. She is - not merely pretends to be but is, if she is a good actress — a dozen different personalities in as many seasons. If she is a member of a stock company, she may easily be the dozen different personalities in as many nights.
This versatility has, of course, a direct influence on her own personality. The great actress has usually several sides to her nature, while the ordinary woman has but one, and that often not a particularly broad one. The spectacle of a little, dumpy woman trying to live up to La Tosca costume copied from a superb affair worn by Madame Eames is scarcely more distressing than that of a tall and angular maiden in her thirties dressing like and endeavoring to imitate the kittenish sauciness of a Billie Burke.
Actresses Who Delight In Statuesque Effects
Between the tragedy garments of Miss Julia Marlowe, who dearly loves a role in which she may be emotional in sackcloth-like shapeless garments and with her hair let down, and the airy petticoats of a Genee who twinkles through her part in tulle sprinkled with lilles-of-the-valley, there are innumerable types of costume. Even the more or less conventional garb of modern dress is made to take on new meanings when expressing the different personalities of the actresses who play modern society roles. But there are two general types of dress under which the lesser classifications are arranged. These two types are the statuesque and the winsome styles of costume. Some women look better in one than in the other. Some may wear only one type with safety.
An actress whom the statuesque type of costume greatly becomes is Miss Bertha Kalish. One of the costumes she wore last season — a long, sinuous satin gown loaded and encrusted with embroideries and jewels, was a veritable Cleopatra affair, and huge emeralds swinging from her ears and over her brow In the thick waves of her dark hair increased this effect of magnificence. Mme. Emma Eames is always statuesque — even when garbed as simple Marguerite.
Bernhardt is one of the few gifted actresses who may be statuesque, petite, piquant, mignonne or simple as it pleases her. Bernhardt is no longer thin. Though she will never be other than a slender woman, that excessive leanness - of which she was clever enough to make a feature - has disappeared, but Bernhardt as this latest photograph shows, still affects the voluminous costume effects, the wrist and throat swathings which suggest the extreme of pathetic thinness.
Miss Billie Burke Sets Debutante Fashions
Quite the antithesis of Madame. Bernhardt's sumptuous and stately gowns are the dainty frocks of little Miss Billie Burke, who divides honors with Miss Elsie Janis as the debutante's idol. Miss Burke's costumes are copied and recopied; so are her postures, her vigorous little mannerisms, the way she does her hair and poises her head and opens her big, babyish eyes.
Billie Burke's frocks are always exquisitely feminine and exquisitely young. She seems the incarnation of youth and joy and the spring time of happiness. Her wilful, petulant, entrancing little ways are expressed by her charming frocks, and though her followers may not hope to possess her saucy new retrousse, her dimples or the winsome way of her, they faithfully copy her curls and her costumes.
The photograph shows Miss Burke in one of the dainty frocks she wears in "Mrs. Dot," a chiffon affair draped over white ince and bordered at the feet with skunk fur. The bodice is a simple surplice that folds softly across the bosom, the V of the chiffon revealing a quaint little vest of white lace. Below the girdle the chiffon overdress parts again and shows the petticoat of chiffon shirred over lace. On her head, confining the riotous curls that are part of this little actress's charm is the famous "Billie Burke fillet," made of three squares of Russian lace mounted on silver gauze and embroidered with small white beads and turquoises.
Another pretty frock worn in "Mrs. Dot" was designed for Miss Burke after a Callot model. This little dress is a copy of one worn by the Empress Josephine in the days when her slender loveliness first caught Napoleon's eye. There is a lace overdress which hangs slim and straight over a very narrow slip of thin pink silk and the lace overdress is caugnt in just beneath the bust and arms with a broad pink silk sash at the top of which is sewed a wreath of tiny pink roses. Could anyone imagine a frock more sweetly simple and chancing?
Still another gown worn by Miss Burke in "Mrs. Dot" is of Lierre lace over white satin, a court train of the lace falling from the shoulders to the floor. With this gown is worn a hat of nattier blue brocade and pink roses, with long streamers of black velvet coming from under the wide brim.
Emotional Gowns for Great Scenes
Tempestuous is the word to apply to Leslie Carter's costumes. Never for one moment do you forget the woman in considering the gown, but somehow the very draperies seem to be instinct with the fire and intensity of supreme temperament.
The costume designed for a great emotional scene is not always elaborate. Sometimes it is nunlike in its slmplicity or somberness, but even if it be but the most ordinary skirt and blouse of dark serge somehow or other it will be - on the actress who wears it - anything but ordinary. There will be a trick of collar — a certain cut of shoulder — a bit of a white cuff against the dark fabric that will make a picture of this very ordinary serge skirt and blouse and give it a meaning and an expression that ordinary, workaday clothes never have.
Look at the costumes Mrs. Fiske wore in "Salvation Nell:" at the prim, business-like frocks of Blanche Bates in "The Fighting Hope," jet these gowns, worn by these women in these thrilling scenes, were distinct with personality and dressed better than any frills or furbelows could have done the intense feeling of the emotional parts they costumed.
The Feminine Frock and Its Prototype
Two actresses there are who are always — in whatever role they are cast — deliciously feminine and appealing. These are Miss Elsie Ferguson and Miss Frances Starr. Photographs of both these acresses in new costumes worn in plays of this season, are reproduced on today's page.
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| Frances Starr |
Elsie Ferguson |
Miss Ferguson is always sweet, always expressive of gentleness, tenderess and sympathetic womanhood. Her costumes emphasize this appeal. Over the beautiful dress of chiffon and chantilly lace, is thrown one of Miss Ferguson's superb evening wraps — a model of velvet richly embroidered with gold thread. The small hat with its burden of heavy plumes is worn off the face to show the actress lovely hair which is one of her most striking beauty points.
The gown worn by Miss Frances Starr is especially lovely and is replete with feminine appeal and charm. It is of chiffon over very thin, clinging satin, the upper bodice above the tunic being of chiffon over Valenciennes lace. The embroidery done on net is as soft, clinging and supple in texture as the gown material and the whole costume seems to follow the wearer's lovely figure in soft and subtly defining curves. The oriental necklace of coral and dull silver is a striking detail of this costume.
Miss Jane Cowl in "The Gamblers" wears a most beautiful chiffon gown in the first act. This is a dinner costume of canary yellow, the bottom of the skirt being bordered with black marten fur. With Miss Cowl's dark hair and vivid coloring this gown is most effective. In the same act Miss Edith Barker wears a very chic little dinner gown of reseda green satin veiled with chocolate Chiffon.
Thousands of Yards of Chiffon In the "Blue Bird"
Though individual personalities count for nothing in the cast of the "Blue Bird" the costumes are certainly wonderful, and tremendous must have been the bill for chiffons. Yards and yards of this filmy and expensive stuff float about in wonderful color effects. The gown of "Night" all in shades of the ineffable greenish-blue against which the young moon comes out on an autumn evening is an achievement in dress. So are the floating, elusive draperies of the 12 hours, the almost liquid folds of fabric that flow from "Water's" slim shoulders, and the lovely, indescribable blue draperies of the "Little Unborn Children" through which their yellow curls and round pink limbs gleam exquisitely.
Opera Costumes Barely Express Personality
The grand opera star wears her telling costumes in concert work, and not in operatic productions. The music — the voice is the particular interest at the opera — never the costumes. One scarcely remembers, after hearing "Butterfly" what Cio Cio San's kimonos were like. Of course, "Aida" wore something splendid and barbaric, but just what was it? Traviata may expire in ever so wonderful a Paris negligee, but no one pays much attention to it listening to her song. Even of Calve's costumes ion "Carmen" one seems to carry away but recollection beyond that of fringe on her shawl. But in her concert costumes, built by Parisian couturiers, the opera star is very splendid.
Miss Geraldine Farrar has a most lovely gown, designed by Paquin, in which she has sung at several private entertainments this winter. This gown is of paillette embroidered pink chiffon over which is draped a scarflike drapery of pink satin meteor. The bodice of pink
chiffon over lace reveals the contour of the shoulders and arms and around one arm, edging the diminutive lace sleeve, is a band of dark fur — the only fur that appears on the entire costume.
Madame Fremstadt is another opera star who dresses rather simply off the stage. This singer has a charming personality, a sympathetic face and a neat little figure rather inclining to embonpoint.