A while ago I found this wonderfull book with pictures from the Seeberger collection. The Seeberger brothers photographed the fashionable people, mostly young socialites, of their time (from 1909 till 1950). The thing that makes the collection and this book so special is that it shows fashions how they were actually worn. The fashion plates of the early 20th century are often more disfiguring women's shapes than photoshop is doing today. You get a vibe of the real 'look' women had instead of the ideal they aspired to.
There is quite a difference between a 30's fashion print of a bias cut evening dress or a woman wearing it. Vionnet had pictures taken of the dresses she created worn by models.I noticed, when visiting the Vionnet retrospective in Paris earlier this year, that even the 'models' Vionnet used to show her dresses did not meet the ideal of the fashion print.
The pictures in this book show women who are not even professional models (at least most of them aren't). It is more or less showing 'street style', the biggest difference being that these most of these women are from the absolute upperclass of European society. Some of them dress timelissly elegant other are clearly fashion-victims.
The author, Celestine Dars, furnished the pictures with witty comments. The text however focusses on the big changes Europe was going through in these years and the influence of these changes on fashion.
More recently another book about the Seeberger collection was published, Elegance: The Seeberger Brothers and the Birth of Fashion Photography by Virginie Chardin. This book is still on my wishlist.
The Seeberger collection shows that something as 'happening' as photographing 'street style' fashion is nothing new. Something the internet has made possible to become big and accesible to a wide and variable public.
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