Wearable Art

After my previous post about Viennese art, fashion and feminism in turn-of-the-century Vienna, I just had to share these three paintings of Emilie Flöge, all by Gustav Klimt, her long-time companion.

I love how you can see Flöge’s evolution from young innocent girl to proper society lady to bohemian intellectual in these portraits. In the first, she wears virginal white; in the second, she has her hair up and she looks very pretty in her wasp-waisted ruffled gown. In the third, the most famous of her portraits, she has frizzy hair and a long, unstructured, resplendent gown in peacock blue and emerald and gold.

The heiress would go on to open her own dress-making business with her sisters in 1904. Their designs were loose, free and sometimes has wild, glorious prints — which looked a bit like Op-Art today. She worked at the design house until it shuttered in 1938.