Born in 1878 in San Francisco, Dora Duncan was one of four children raised in “genteel poverty” by their music teacher mother. From an early age, she began to display the rebellious tendencies that would make her infamous. As a child, she rejected the traditional disciplines of ballet as “ugly and unnatural”, and based her dancing on natural rhythms and movements. This free spirited style was encouraged by her family, and she soon began performing for others. Her first professional performances in Chicago and New York were met with little enthusiasm. Determined that her own interpretive style would be appreciated outside the U.S., at the age of 21, Isadora Duncan took her expressive dance to London. Once there, she studied ancient Greek sculpture at the British Museum, and found confirmation in their form that the instinctive movements and gestures that she was introducing, were based on classical dance. She, and dance critics began to agree that her dance was a renaissance of an ancient style.
Through the patronage of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, a celebrated London actress, Isadora began to perform for private receptions and soiree’s of London’s leading hostesses. Soon the public was clamoring for her unique and sometimes scandalous performances. Her fresh approach to dance and freedom of movement attracted many fans of ballet, which was then in a period of decay. Her barefoot, scantily clad performances became all the rage across Europe. Her first tour of Russia in 1905 made deep impressions on powerful impresarios and art critics.
Isadora’s personal life was just as unorthodox and wild as her dance. She abhorred the idea of marriage, but carried on a lengthy lesbian affair with poet and playwright, Mercedes de Acosta, lover to Greta Garbo, Marlena Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. She bore children, first to stage designer Gordon Craig, and later to sewing machine heir, Paris Singer. In a tragedy from which she would never recover, both of her children and their nurse were drowned when the automobile they were riding in plunged into the Seine River in Paris in 1913.
In 1922, Isadora acted on her sympathies for the Russian political and social experiment, and she moved to Moscow. Although the flambuoyant Duncan stood out rather dramatically in the increasingly austere atmosphere of post-revolution Russia, she also drew attention to their cultural and artistic efforts. There, she met and married Sergei Yesenin, a recognized poet, 17 years her junior. He accompanied her on her last tours of Europe and the United States, but they were viewed with suspicion and labeled as Bolshevik agents. Isadora vowed never to return to America. Sergei’s drunken rages across Europe during her tour took their toll, and he returned to Moscow alone in 1925, where, after falling into a depression, he committed suicide.
The last years of Isadora’s life was spent living precariously between Paris and the French Riviera, sometimes at the expense of her friends. In 1927, at the age of 49, one of her signature long, billowing scarves became entangled in the spokes of a convertible automobile in which she was a passenger, and she died of a broken neck. Isadora Duncan was a great innovator, paving the way for the development of modern interpretive dance and raising it to an art form. We salute Isadora Duncan, our Tart of the Week!
Kitty was probably born around 1738 and entered into the world’s oldest profession at an early age. To say she was acquisitive would be a gross understatement. She was absolutely mercenary, demanding the highest payment for her services and demanding the very best of everything from her gentlemen friends. Her beauty must have been remarkable, because she lived in splendor, with liveried servants and more than enough money to support her lavish lifestyle. All of fashionable London copied her gowns. She was very sure of herself and her popularity, claiming that she turned down the advances of Casanova, himself, because he only offered her 2/3 of her normal fee. Casanova, however, in a letter written at the time, claims that she offered, but he turned her down, finding her too common for his taste, since she only spoke English. It may have been Kitty Fisher who was the real inventor of the sandwich. Insulted by a gentleman’s offer of 1000 pounds for her services (she usually charged twice that much), she took the bank note, put it between two slices of buttered bread, and ate it to show her contempt. The Earl of Sandwich, who was a friend of hers, may have been inspired by her tantrum.
If you’re like me, you have considered the history of the bra, and come to your own conclusions as to how it was invented. My theory involved a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition, an angry husband, and well, never mind, it gets complicated from there.
The bra has been used throughout HERstory, in one form or another, to enhance or conceal the bust, as fashion demanded. The history of the modern bra will not begin until 1913, with the advent of the flat-chested flapper and her bouncy dances like the Charleston. Socialite Mary Phelps-Jacob was going to attend one of those glittering, high society events, like we have all seen in the old movies. You know the ones where the people move just a little too fast and they talk in elaborate font styles on cardboard screen boards with slightly flat piano music pounding in the background. Who wouldn’t go out and purchase a new, sheer evening gown for such an event? Mary certainly did. Unfortunately, the dress was meant for a lady who was less well-endowed than she.
The other unfortunate thing was that underwear fashion had not kept pace with dress design, and the undies of the day included a whalebone corset to emphasize the bust and minimize the waist. You have probably already come to the same conclusion that Mary did. Whalebone and sheer fabric just don’t go together. Being an enterprising young woman, she sewed a couple of handkerchiefs together, added some cord, and designed herself the first backless bra. Her friends, who were also struggling to be flat-chested in a world of the corseted chestiness, were delighted with Mary’s invention, and she whipped up copies of her masterpiece for them. When a stranger offered Mary a dollar to make one, she knew she was on her way to underwear fame and fortune. Mary Phelps-Jacob patented her invention in 1914 as the “backless brassiere”. The word brassiere is an old French term for “support”.
Even with their commercial success, bras have gone through their own evolution, from Mary’s chest-binding minimizer, to Madonna’s infamous cones, that, one should remind you, should not be tried at home unless you want to put an eye out, brassieres have developed to complement the fashion of the day. In fact, one could say that bras are the foundation upon which couture is shaped. Literally.
