Ensemble of seafoam green long-sleeved velvet jacket and pale grey-green pleated silk dress. The jacket is loose and boxy in shape, open down the front, with repeating interwoven floral motifs and vine-pattern edging stencilled in muted yellow-green. The jacket ties at the rounded neck with a long cord in the same yellow-green, knotted at the ends. The dress, worn under the jacket, is a straight column of irregularly pleated silk, emellished at both sides with a vertical line of round beads. The bottom edge of the dress flares out on the ground, curled at the edges like a lettuce leaf.

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Object Timeline

	We acquired this object.
1939	Work on this object began.
2015	We photographed this object. We photographed this object. We photographed this object. We photographed this object.
2017	We exhibited this object.
2024	You found it!

Dress And Jacket With Box And Lid, Delphos

This is a Dress and jacket with box and lid. It is dated 1939. Its medium is silk, glass beads and its technique is dress: pleated plain weave; jacket: supplementary warp pile (velvet), stencil printed. It is a part of the Textiles department.

Fortuny was a 20th-century Renaissance man—a painter, printmaker and photographer, he also designed theatrical sets and costumes and invented lighting systems for theater. But he is best known for his iconic Delphos dress, which was introduced around 1907 and was produced with only minor variation until his death in 1949. He patented the pleating process in 1909, along with some of his dyeing and printing processes, but left out just enough information that the process has never been fully understood. Traditionally pleats are made by adhering fabric to pre-scored cardboard forms, but Fortuny’s irregular pleats must have been hand-made, and were given further dimension by rolling the vertically pleated fabric through a series of horizontal heated copper rods to give an undulating effect. His natural dyeing processes and use of stenciled metallic pigments and discharge agents to replicate the look of ancient Persian, Islamic and Renaissance woven fabrics (which he collected) are also much admired for their depth and richness.

This particular example is in its original box, which has both the name of the buyer, Mrs. J.H. Lorentzen of Pasadena California, and the seller, Elsie McNeil. This provides a key into the importance of the American market in Fortuny’s success. The first photograph of a Delphos dress is by Alfred Steiglitz—a portrait of his sister taken in 1907. By 1912, Fortuny’s gowns were being sold in New York. Because they hug the body and were designed to be worn without a corset, in Europe the Delphos was considered a tea gown—suitable only for at-home entertaining. But American actresses and dancers like Lillian Gish and Isadora Duncan wore them in public as evening gowns. In 1927 Elsie McNeil, an American interior designer, became so enamored of Fortuny’s fabrics that she went to Italy and persuaded him to give her the exclusive rights to sell his products in the US. She became his close friend, protégé, and guardian angel—she helped him through some very difficult financial times in the 1930s and after WWII, and purchased the company after his death.

It is credited Museum purchase from the Members' Acquisitions Fund of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Curtain (Italy)
cotton.
Gift of Isabelle Dufresne.
1979-25-1-a

Below-the-knee evening dress of silk, metallic thread and glass beads. It is from the 1920’s dress with the flat front that was favored then. The design is composed of pieces sewn together. Cubist in flavor, It has intersecting black and brown designs against a metallic mustard gold background. The cut-out neckline and choker-like collar create the effect of a long white pointed collar when displayed on the white plastic mannequin.

Evening Dress, ca. 1924
silk, metallic yarn, glass beads, compound weave.
Lent by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Collection,....
51.2016.2

Photograph of three mouth blown, transparent glass vases against a white neutral background. Although approximately of the same size, the vases by Italian designer Umberto Bellotto, are arranged in order of decreasing size from left to right. Each of the vases has a unique appearance, but they are all composed of basic geometric forms (cone, sphere, cylinder, spiral), with transparent glass bodies accented with contrasting details (such as rims, handles, or applied decorations) in dark, opaque glass. The vase at the center has a transparent green body with spiral handles. The body of the vase consists of two equally sized bubbles, cinched at the waist, on top of which rests a long narrow neck that flares into a disk. Spiral handles, made of green transparent glass, are applied on each side between the two spherical bubbles. The spirals are of the Archimedean type, i.e. a spiral that increases in distance from the point of origin at a constant rate, like a rope wound around itself. The diameter of the handles is similar to that of one of the bubbles that compose the body. The body rests on a large circular foot. The neck and waist of the vessel, the top lip and foot are rimmed in opaque black glass. The vases on the left and right are made of colorless, or light greenish, transparent glass layered with alternating encased air bubbles and accented with contrasting details of opaque cobalt blue glass. The vase on the right has twin fused ring handles in cobalt blue creating an indentation in the middle of the body of the vase. Hence, the body appears as consisting of two transparent ovoid bubbles with a blue waist in the middle. The body of the vase on the left consists of a large cone of transparent glass with encased air bubbles, rimmed with cobalt blue glass. The vase has two blue, circular handles attached to the middle of the stem. The body of both vases rests on a stem, decorated at either end with four rotating band covers made of blue glass, and on a large circular, transparent foot.

Object ID #404576205
blown glass.
Gift of Neil and Donna Weisman.
2015-48-1

Our curators have highlighted 2 objects that are related to this one.

Evening Coat
velvet, silk, beads, metallic embroidery.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Christian R. Holmes,....
76.2016.5

A beige and brown finely checked wool knit skirt suit. The jacket reaches below the waist to the top of the thighs and has a long paneled collar that appears to sit loosely. It is worn open over a pale salmon pink shirt which has a ribbon belt tied in a bow on our left side. The fluted, columnar skirt falls below the knees. The suit is worn by a white, faceless mannequin, whose right hand is placed on the hip to allow the jacket to be open revealing the shirt underneath.

Object ID #1041531531
wool.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Ann Andrews, 1972, 72.136.6A-B.
76.2016.6

Its dimensions are

H x W (A- Dress): 162.6 × 35.6 cm (5 ft. 4 in. × 14 in.) H x W (B- Jacket): 91.4 × 86.4 cm (36 × 34 in.)

Cite this object as

Dress And Jacket With Box And Lid, Delphos; silk, glass beads; H x W (A- Dress): 162.6 × 35.6 cm (5 ft. 4 in. × 14 in.) H x W (B- Jacket): 91.4 × 86.4 cm (36 × 34 in.); Museum purchase from the Members' Acquisitions Fund of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum; 2016-28-1-a,b

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/77rYB/
Accession Number 2016-28-1-a,b
Object ID 69157031