[HAUTE COUTURE FABRIC SAMPLES] Fall 1929 broad silks.

A$350 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

New York : Atlas Mills, 200 Madison Ave., 1929. Small folio portfolio (305 x 230 mm), original cloth backed textured papered boards (faded and scuffed), housing two sample cards (by Chas. Green Co., New York) with a total of 72 vibrantly coloured silks; a few pencilled annotations (presumably made by a sales representative) and some minor handling marks to the edges of the cards, otherwise in fine condition a simply dazzling array of haute couture silk samples with colours across the entire palette. Atlas Mills employed a talented wordsmith to come up with a set of names for the colours of their Fall 1929 silk range. From the noble and classic (Jeanne D Arc; Ondine; Castillian; Dauphine Blue; Nile) to the romantic, daring and exotic (Pandora; Midnight; Brown Sugar; Maracaibo; Goya; Independence; Passion Flower), to the nonchalant and informal (Chin Chin; Brioche; Meadow Sweet; Mother Goose), and the apt and topical (Byrd Blue; Navigator; Pilot), they are all wonderfully evocative. The irony is, of course, that the Wall Street stock market crash which heralded the Great Depression occurred precisely in the middle of Fall 1929 even as the couturiers to the women of New York s high society were selecting from this beautiful range of new silks.

• Binding: Hardcover

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