NGV Vienna Art and Design - Klimt Schiele Hoffmann Loos

Fashion

Increasing industrialisation in the nineteenth century encouraged a radical redistribution of wealth and power in Europe, resulting in a shift in class structures and gender roles. Fashion, once the preserve of the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie, began to find new outlets and reflect changing lifestyles.

• Wiener Werkstätte fashion
• Emilie Flöge

As society industrialised, women gradually gained greater independence and urban society adopted new mechanised forms of transport. Clothing had to be adapted to suit these changed conditions. Full swirling skirts were hardly practical for city life. Andwhile bicycles, for instance, were initially viewed as an eccentric indulgence of more affluent classes, even so they necessitated a change in clothing.

Women’s garments were slowest to change (as were the conditions of their lives). The exaggerated silhouette of tiny waists and bustles endured until the early twentieth century, especially for evening gowns. These garments restricted the body (relying on corsets to create unnaturally slender waistlines) restraining movement and breathing.

Againstthis background, clothing designed by Viennese fashion designer Emily Flöge in collaboration with artist Gustav Klimt, and by the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) was considered radically new and elegantly unorthodox.

Their loose, flowing garments were known as Reformkleider, the German term for artistic dress adapted from the British Arts and Crafts movement, and often featured colourful fabrics in striking graphic prints designed by the Wiener Werkstätte.