Drawn to beautiful fashion, I’ve been intrigued by the crinkly fabric of Fortuny’s gowns with a simple silhouette, reminiscently inspired by Delphos gowns, were designed after the Classical Greek garment known as the chiton.
ANCIENT GREEK CHITON
Three years ago, while shopping for a beautiful silk appropriate for an Ancient Greek upper-class lady to wear, I found some changeable turquoise/bronze crinkled silky fabric on sale.
Loving the look, I immediately thought of the lovely, pleated gowns from the Fortuny collection.
Knowing the connection between Classical Greece and Fortuny’s gowns, I bought enough to make a chiton to wear for our Ancient Greece Becoming History presentation with plans to eventually convert it to a Fortuny Delphos gown.
But first, I needed to focus on the chiton for Ancient Greece.
Greeks wore these as long tubes, sewn on one side, and attached at the shoulders with brooch like items.
MARIO FORTUNY INFLUENCED BY THE EAST
Three years later it was time to prepare for 20th century costumes, so I deeply researched the Delphos connection with Mario Fortuny, who was highly influenced by the East.
The references to Greek columns and sculptures, to their workmanship and elegance, are immediate and it is no coincidence: in those years the English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, the father of the Minoan civilization, who was then doing important excavations in the Palace of Knossos in Crete brought to light many new decorative motifs that Fortuny also reinterpreted in his shawls. –Fortuny Venezia
While growing up Fortuny was surrounded by treasures from the East, like beautiful silks.
Orientalism began with Napoleon’s treasures that he brought to Paris in the early 19th century.
FORTUNY TRANSFORMS DELPHOS STYLE
French Impressionist artists were influenced by Japanese woodblock prints which later influenced Fortuny.
Many of Fortuny’s belts, for example, were printed, which might have been influenced by Japanese style.
Recreating the comfort and ease in movement of the kimono, Fortuny designed a simple silhouette in keeping with the new styles of the 20th century.
To reflect the rich colors of the East, Fortuny used imported dyes from the East for his gowns.
The pleating process of the fabric is also thought to be influenced by Eastern technique.
Unfortunately, Fortuny’s pleating process was such a closely guarded secret, his methods remain a mystery.
This series of tiny and seemingly infinite folds of the fabric give the dress the extraordinary possibility of extending, helping to reveal the body in a refined way, enhancing its shape…Thanks to its simplicity: it is in fact a cylinder-shaped dress that leaves room for the head and arms, made with a rectangular cut. The peculiarity is the width of the cut used since the plissé requires about 3 or 4 times more material than the width of the dress. –Fortuny Venezia
Even the use of beads might have been influenced by the East.
FORTUNY FASHION
Fortuny gowns, created from 1909-1949, were also called tea gowns, at first worn in comfort by fine ladies at home.
Breaking from the trend of the early 20th century corsets that created the S-silhouette, these gowns were to be worn without the traditional underpinnings in the comfort of home.
The daring eventually wore them as evening gowns.
MARIO FORTUNY CREDITS HIS WIFE
The greatest success of the Fortuny Atelier was the creation of the Delphos gown in 1909, an iconic dress, a landmark in the history of fashion. Inspired by the Ionic chiton of the Auriga, a Greek sculpture discovered in Delphi in 1896, it stood out for its essential shape, which gently enveloped the woman’s body, and consisted of four or five cloths of silk satin or taffeta characterized by a very fine pleating that is still done today through a manual process with which up to four hundred and fifty folds for each cloth can be obtained. The neckline and sleeves were adjustable by means of a silk drawstring enriched with Murano glass beads. Although Mariano Fortuny is generally considered the designer of the dress, he acknowledged Henriette, his wife and muse, as the true creator of the Delphos gown, with an authentic side note written on the patent. –Fortuny Venezia
CHANGEABLE COLOR SILK DESCRIPTION
The Fortuny gown which Albertine was wearing that evening seemed to me the tempting phantom of that invisible Venice. It swarmed with Arabic ornaments, like the Venetian palaces hidden like sultanas behind a screen of pierced stone, like the bindings in the Ambrosian library, like the columns from which the Oriental birds that symbolised alternatively life and death were repeated in the mirror of the fabric, of an intense blue which, as my gaze extended over it, was changed into a malleable gold, by those same transmutations which, before the advancing gondolas, change into flaming metal the azure of the Grand Canal. And the sleeves were lined with a cherry pink which is so peculiarly Venetian that it is called Tiepolo pink. –Marcel Proust, from the about page at Fortuny Venezia
A PARTNERSHIP DESCRIBED
Henriette shared her husband’s passions and aesthetic canons and conducted the first experiments with printing with wooden matrices in order to create the Knossos shawl. –Fortuny Venezia
RECREATING A FORTUNY DELPHOS GOWN
Since no one knows the secret to Fortuny’s pleats, I allowed the crinkle of the fabric to substitute for the famed Fortuny technique.
And although this is not a perfect recreation, I gained a deeper appreciation in the process.
The deep colors in my gown are indeed Eastern influenced, using bold color combinations like I found in other Fortuny gowns.
After researching tons of styles of Fortuny gowns, I draped mine based on one I especially liked from the 1920s.
Replicating the look of some of the belts used for his gowns, I found a patterned ribbon to use for my belt.
I carefully sewed glass beads along the armholes and side seams, like the Fortuny gowns.
RESOURCE
Dykes, Amy R. Documentation of a Mariano Fortuny Delphos Gown. Thesis. Univeristy of Georgia, 1997. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
EPILOGUE 2024
While moving my old blog to this new location, I found a new to me source at this link, where Fortuny’s Delphos gowns are sold in Europe at Fortuny Venezia.
Upon the death of Mario and Henriette Fortuny, the pleating secret was lost.
The artists’ creative legacy seemed lost, but a curious young Venetian who frequently visited Palazzo Fortuny, which was turned into a museum, brought to light the secrets of its wonders: lamps, diffusers, dresses, silk and velvet clothing…
Those magical objects that had fascinated him so much had to be admired by everyone, they couldn’t disappear along with their creators. In the presence of such a treasure, the enthusiasm for discovery grew. For months, that young man, together with some collaborators, leafed through the “magician’s” notes, carefully observed the clothing folds, in search of his innermost secrets, in order to rebuild a workshop that preserve his technologies and methods. It was 1984 when the pleating procedure was finally perfected, allowing the creation of accessories and clothes. This is how Lino Lando refounded the Atelier of Palazzo Orfei in Venice, continuing the handcrafted production of lamps, clothing accessories and perfumes. –Fortuny Venezia
Thus, I’ve incorporated Fortuny Venezia quotes into the original 2013 text of the blog post.
