#lucille ltd

[resplendentoutfit]

Gorgeous Edwardian Greens

Evening dress • Lucille Ltd, Paris • c. 1918 - 1920 • Silk, gold-embroidered net, satin binding, silk flowers • National Museum of Scotland

Read more about this dress here.

Evening dress • Green silk satin, green voile embroidered with gold-colored glass beads and green chenille thread • c. 1913

Laferrière Creation • 1909 | House of Worth • 1900

[mote-historie]

Dinner Dress, detail, by Design House Lucile Ltd., New York, Designer Lucy Christina, Lady Duff Gordon, 1918.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[alwaysalwaysalwaysthesea]

Silk and fur dance dress, probably Lucile Ltd., 1939. Gift of Irene Castle.

(source: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

[history-of-fashion]

1916 Woman's "Happiness" dinner dress by Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon (Label Lucile Ltd., New York)

silk taffeta, satin, tulle, and chiffon with lace, lace insets and appliqué, ribbons, and silk flowers

(Philadelphia Museum of Art)

[inhernature]

generations

By Lucille Clifton

people who are going to be in a few years bottoms of trees bear a responsibility to something besides people                         if it was only you and me sharing the consequences it would be different it would be just generations of men                         but this business of war these war kinds of things are erasing those natural obedient generations who ignored pride                               stood on no hind legs                               begged no water                               stole no bread did their own things

and the generations of rice of coal of grasshoppers

by their invisibility denounce us

Lucille Clifton, “generations” from How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of The Permission Company LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions Ltd.

[jewellery-box]

Evening Dress, circa 1918-1920.

Woman's evening dress of bright green and red shot silk, trimmed across the shoulders and down centre front with gold embroidered net and passementerie, waist and skirt front with stems of flowers on wires in blue, yellow and grey silk with white pearls at centre: French, Paris, by Lucile Ltd.

Image © National Museums Scotland

[dk-thrive]

old years blow back like a wind

I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises —  Lucille Clifton, from “I am running into a new year” in Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980 (BOA Editions Ltd., April 17, 2014) (via see more)

[thoughtportal]

the lost baby poem

By Lucille Clifton

Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Forward to a Friend the time i dropped your almost body down down to meet the waters under the city and run one with the sewage to the sea what did i know about waters rushing back what did i know about drowning or being drowned

you would have been born into winter in the year of the disconnected gas and no car we would have made the thin walk over genesee hill into the canada wind to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands you would have fallen naked as snow into winter if you were here i could tell you these and some other things

if i am ever less than a mountain for your definite brothers and sisters let the rivers pour over my head let the sea take me for a spiller of seas let black men call me stranger always for your never named sake

A Note from the Editor

Lucille Clifton was born in 1936. “Sometimes we cannot mother the souls that choose us. Our choices often revolve around resource, but love is continuous.” - Guest Editor Emily Hooper Lansana

Lucille Clifton, “the lost baby poem” from good woman: poems and a memoir, 1969-1980. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

Source: good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980 ( BOA Editions Ltd., 1987 )

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

new bones

we will wear new bones again. we will leave these rainy days, break out through another mouth into sun and honey time. worlds buzz over us like bees, we be splendid in new bones. other people think they know how long life is. how strong life is. we know.

— Lucille Clifton, “New Bones” in The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 (BOA Editions Ltd.; August 28, 2012)

[if they catch you in the darga]

NILS UDO, Sculpture de soleil pour l’équinoxe, 1979

[lamodedelabelleepoque]

[les-modes]

Tea gown by Lucile, Les Modes December 1922. Photo by Rahma.

[writinghistorylit]

Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon- Fashion Designer and Titanic Survivor

Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon was born Lucy Christiana in London on June 13, 1863. She became one of England”s most prominent fashion designers in the 19th and early part of the 20th century.

Lucy married James Stuart Wallace in 1885 and the couple had one child. Unfortunately, the marriage was not a happy one as Wallace was unfaithful and a heavy drinker. They separated and were divorced in 1900. To support herself and her daughter, Lucy started a dressmaking business in her home.

Her company, Lucile Ltd, catered to the wealthy clientele in London and grew as she opened up salons in New York, Paris, and Chicago. Her designs were the first in popularizing lower necklines and less restricting dress for women of the time. Lucile Ltd was most known for its lingerie and evening wear line.

Lucy Duff-Gordon is also considered the first designer to develop the “runway” concept where fashion models walked down a “catwalk” stage in theatrical performances.

Besides being well known for her fashion accomplishments, Lucy is also remembered for being one of the first class survivors on the RMS Titanic as well. Traveling for business to New York, Lucy’s husband, Scottish baronet, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon., whom she married in 1900, booked them a first class passage on the unsinkable ship. He checked them in under the alias, “Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.

As luck would have it, on the night of the sinking, the couple would be put in the first lifeboat to evacuate the ship. It left with only 12 survivors on it and Sir Cosmo Gordon would be one of the few first class men to be given a spot with the women survivors. His reputation, however, would suffer, as he and Lucy were subject to cross-examination of their testimony during the Titanic inquiry.

By September of 1922, Lucy Duff-Gordon stopped designing for Lucile Ltd and the company closed soon after. She died in 1935, at the age of 71, from breast cancer, in London.

[thehappymediumsteapot]

It did save money & fabric, but it also saved time. When you gotta change 5 times a day, it's much faster to just change the outermost layer on top than to put on a whole new dress, possibly with different petticoats if the silhouette is different, etc. Ain't nobody got time for that. It also saved space in your luggage while traveling.

Here are some great examples from Lucile Ltd's Autumn 1905 collection: (sorry for the crap photos, this is a physical book I own that I just ran & grabbed)

You can see with the middle two just how much a different top can change the look of the ensemble. Seriously considering making that last one.

today i learned some edwardian gowns had detachable sleeves so they could both be worn as daywear and eveningwear and honestly im obsessed. ye olde zipper shorts.

[buffleheadcabin]

the coming of fox one evening i return to a red fox haunched by my door. i am afraid although she knows no enemy comes here. next night again then next then next she sits in her safe shadow silent as my skin bleeds into long bright flags of fur.

Lucille Clifton. How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (American Poets Continuum Series) (p. 164). BOA Editions Ltd..

[steliosagapitos]

         Reception or wedding dress attributed to Lucile, 1907-1910

       Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon (June 13, 1863 – April 20, 1935) was a leading British fashion designer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who worked under the professional name Lucile.The first British-based designer to achieve international acclaim, Lucy Duff-Gordon was a widely acknowledged innovator in couture styles as well as in fashion industry public relations. In addition to originating the "mannequin parade", a precursor to the modern fashion show, and training the first professional models, she launched slit skirts and low necklines, popularized less restrictive corsets, and promoted alluring and pared-down lingerie.Opening branches of her London house, Lucile Ltd, in Chicago, New York City, and Paris, her business became the first global couture brand, dressing a trend-setting clientele of royalty, nobility, and stage and film personalities. Duff-Gordon is also remembered as a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, and as the losing party in the precedent-setting 1917 contract law case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote the opinion for New York's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, upholding a contract between Duff-Gordon and her advertising agent that assigned the agent the sole right to market her name. It was the first case of its kind, clothes labelled and sold at a lowered cost in a cheaper market under an expensive "brand name".

[aperfumedpearl]

intimate ensemble from Lucile Ltd, circa 1920s