couture

This book, with examples of 1935 French advertising design, is part of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library’s Special Collections materials on typography and graphic design. With text, design, and layout by Alex Pinon, this volume is a fascinating look into advertising typography by one of the leading French type foundries of the period. Alex Pinon (1900-1961) started his career in typography and fashion illustration after the First World War; during the 1950s he was a prominent cover illustrator of bestsellers of popular literature.

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library owns over 4,000 photographs by American photographer and journalist Thérèse Bonney, (1894-1978), who documented life in Paris from 1925-35.

The popularity of the French fashion plate was revitalized in the early part of the 20th century by artists like Paul Iribe (1883-1935), working with fashion designers such as Paul Poiret. These illustrations were hand colored using the pochoir process, whereby stencils and metal plates are used allowing for colors to be built up according to the artist's vision. The fashion plate, in use for some time, was in essence an advertising tool—a piece of artwork used to create desire for the latest styles aimed at an audience of the fashionable and moneyed.