Wearable Art

In Picasso’s painting of the model/artist/photojournalist Lee Miller, she’s wearing a triangle-shaped straw hat. This headgear, known at the time as the “coolie”, was modeled after the hats Asian laborers wore while working the rice fields, and it became extremely popular in the West in the ’30s and ’40s. The American couturier Valentina designed them for her clients, and, after the war, Christian Dior used them to emphasize the hourglass lines of his “new look.” More recently, they’ve appeared on the runway shows of John Galliano, for Dior, and Karl Lagerfeld, for Chanel. American Apparel for a while sold a “conical Asian hat,” which generated some controversy.

Pablo Picasso. Portrait of Lee Miller, 1937.

One of the six portraits he would paint of Miller during and after the summer of ‘37.

(Source: wine-loving-vagabond)