Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943) and Daisy Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg Fellowes (1890-1962) were both American-French socialites, who interacted in many ways with the white elites of the American-French fashion industries. They were heavily complicit in the racist structures and depiction of Kimono as for the 'yellow peoples', with Winnaretta implicitly using Kimono to benefit from racist tropes and imperialism in her career as a painter. This is part of a broader tradition of the French Orientalism genre which would give rise to the Madame Chrysanthemum trope a few years after Winnaretta's use of the Kimonope, in 1883. Daisy, her neice would use these tropes in her time at Harpers Bazaar from 1933-1935, displaying the same ideas about people of colour and their cultural traditions throughout the 20th century.
Winnaretta
Winnaretta was a salon hostess with bisexual leanings. Winnaretta was one of the 26 children of her father Isaac Singers (1811-18something). Her mother was another French-American socialite who married Singer when he was 52 and her mother Eugenie was 19, they would later divorce due to Singers flagrantly disgusting dating history. Winaretta was the heir to the Singer fortune however and therefore was the definition of white privilege. The Singer family moved from America to Pari after the 'upstarty' black people demanded human rights American civil war happened. Hmmmm.
Winaretta lived in Paris for most of her life, with her mother's second husband being reportedly abusive to Winnaretta, who fled in 1883. Unlike other Sapphics (Renee Vivien;1877 - 1909) Winarets decided to join the straightz4life gang. Winnaretta is so classically Sapphic that during her matriomonial night of consummation in 1892, she is said to have climbed up a wardrobe and threatened to help the groom reach the next world. In 1893, she entered a lavendar marriage and began her hostess work. We are interested in Kimono however, and it is in the self portrait of Miss Winaretta Singer which are to delve upon.[1]
Self-portrait
Winaretta was operating as a Queer white woman in France in the late 19th century. At this time, this meant we encounter the Kimono in these spaces as a part and parcel of the actress wardrobe as part of the aesthetic and bohemian movements. From what we can see, the Kimono is most likely a very expensive export from Japan bought in France. This would be a particularly common way for these types to attain their cultural appropriation fixes. I say this, becuase nowhere elese does it seem that Winny decided to appreciate or try to engage with Japanese culture.
Her artwork comes from Queer escape certainly, but for some reason she has decided that as an exhibited artist at the French Academy, her memory should be done in what is a flower crown, with whatever book she has in her hand. The messages are not subtle, the flower crown in fact is a reference to the Greeks and Romans, and the Kimono an aesthetical accent. On its own, this would be fine, but this sets a slightly dangerous precedent when we consider what message this sends to both her audience and her contemporaries about the role Kimono hold for Winnaretta.
What here Winnaretta tells her audience, is a rather sinister message that aestheticism must be beholden to Greek philosphy to be credible. Her arrangement of florals resembling these ideals of 'Old Japan', that is a Western oriental version of Japan dreamt up in the mind of somewhat ignorant elite members of the Western world, is punctuated that the Hellenic literally reigns over this (the laurel crown symbolism). There is very little need for the laurel crown, as the fashion at the time was to wear Greek Anademata ties, which was a well-known hairstyle in those circles. The laurel crown however was something which denoted war, victory and was often worn by Roman emperors to declare their rule as victorious.
In this way, as this was a self-portrait, Winnaretta was perhaps sending a message to her wider contemporaries who at this time had popularised Orientalism. A style of painting which by this time was used as French colonial propaganda to uphold the idea that people of colour required the 'guiding hand' of France to become 'civilized', such as was the case with Algeria whose colonisation by the French began in the 1830s only ending in 1962. In using the symbolism of the laurel crown, Singer signifies the imposition of the West over that of Japan, a country of those who her contemopary French painters such as Fernand Cormon (1845-1924) saw as on the lower rungs of scientific racism's rankings of humanity, as depicted in his white supremacist 'Human Races' which depicts Japan below French white people on this racist ranking of the 'races'.[3]
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When we take this into account, we see that this is an imposition of the West over the East, a victorious triumph of American-French people, over those subjugated peoples who would help their younger sister Old Japan into the New Japan. This was an unfortunately pervasive ideal which only became stronger going into the 20th century and would likely have been passed down to Daisy.
Daisy
Daisy's mother, Isabelle died tragically. Rather like Daisy's trajectory in the shoulder department. Isabelle was Winnaretta's sibling, leading to Daisy being taken in by Winnaretta. Daisy went on to become the Pari Coreespondan for Harpers Bazaar. This was owned at the time by William Randolph Hearst, a blatant and well known racist who kept people of colour out of his magazines, which included Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.[4] These explicitly made Japanese people out to be 'undesirables'.[4] It is in this way that we come to the world in which the 'New Japan' had emerged as a result of Wilsonian foreign policy which in part lead to the depiction of the Japanese Diaspora as having a second class status to that of 'whites'.[2]
Daisy as a white, no doubt encouraged these attitudes given she was rubbing shoulders with Winnaretta and Hearst. Daisy was indeed an inheritor to the Singer fortune and thus also was set for life. To reiterate this point, may we show you the influence of Kimono on her friend Suzanne Belperron (1900–1983) who wears a Kimonope. Ms Belperron's uncle was Paul Poiret the famous designer who made quite a lot of money from taking 'inspiration' from Kimono and creating a few Kimonopes and modern silhouettes. Other firends included the Chanel (a Nazi colloborator) and Schiaparelli (Chanels feted rival). A 'close friend' included Diana Vreeland (1903-1989) who is today known for stating the first known Black supermodel as 'King Kong', and that she was 'nobody's idea of what anybody wants to look like', in reference to a shoot Luna was meant to book in the 1960s.[5] King Kong came out in 1933, in a more racist friendly time and the exact year Daisy began her foray into Harpers Bazaar. A magazine which only included black models 2 years after she left, and which only encouraged the first Asian supermodel Noelie Dasouza Machado (1929-2016) to take the cover in 1959. Even this this comes with the caveat that Machado's home country was under Colonial rule by the Portuguese. This is the mindset these people wrote and followed. Around the end of her time as Pari correspondan, Daisy began a heady diet of Amphetamines, Cocaine and more friendships with Nazi Sympathisers, known as Wallis Simpson by 1936.[8][9]
Another cultural appropriation moment occurred when the colour 'Shocking Pink' was supposedly created for Diasy by Schiaparelli around 1937.[8] Diasy often continued this Oriental fantasy of Asian and 'Other' cultures as beneath her own, as costumes she could try on and profit from but never really give back to. This included ornate costume parties into the 1950s where attendants would stand around in 'exotic' dress from Asian cultures, serving and waiting hand and foot on Daisy, whilst others ran around in blackface.[7] Daisy herself would follow in a bout of cultural flagrance in her 'Hindu' necklace which was worn once to a costume party and then given away as a gift.[6] These items, which most likely included a Kimonope or two in Daisy's armoire, were known as 'Savage jewellery'.[6] Yes it is called the Oriental Ball and yes that is Ms Fellowes walking around in a cheetah print ballgown attended to by an Asian stereotype.[7] Shocking indeed.
Daisy in this way embodied the later trend of Primitivism and it is this way that the money for Singer sewing machines encouraged the adoption of Kimono as a garment for the 'Red Woman' trope, given the way the Singer Heirs spent and adopted or treated Kimono.
Conclusion
In context therefore, the impact of the Singer Dynasty on European KTC can be seen as detrimental, and heavily tied up in Orientalist tropes perpetuated by French and American elites. Winnaretta used Kimonope to embody the ideals of French imperialism and the imposition of Japanese culture as academically beneath that of White Western traditions, and Daisy in the ideals of the Primitivists and Fauvists whom she supported, as well as working amongst some of the most racist Publishers of the day. These usages of Kimono give us an entry into the world of French Orientalism and the Visual Realpolitik of how Kimono were percieved by those in power, particularly in positions of privilege and with a need to uphold whiteness. Kimono are used for the Singer Dynasty as tools of oppression and are directly a product of their racial worldviews and times.
Bibliography
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnaretta_Singer
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Fellowes
[3] Allegorizing Aryanism: Fernand Cormon's The Human Races, Maria P Gindhart, 2008, Volume 9, Online Edition, The Journal of the History of Art (Aurora), WAPACC Organization
[4] On Media Moguls and Racist Tropes, Vicki Mayer, Alice Pavanello, 2022, pp.70-74, Volume 24, Online, Journalism & Communication Monographs, SAGE Publishing
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Belperron
[6] https://www.prestigeonline.com/th/jewellery/cartier-udyana-necklace/
[7] https://littleaugury.blogspot.com/2014/01/daisy-roars.html
[8] https://graindemusc.blogspot.com/2008/11/schiaparelli-shocking-hot-pink-and.html
[9] http://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-most-wicked-daisy-fellowes.html
Essay Abstracts
#1 Renee Vivien (1877 - 1909) --- Born Pauline Tarn, was an English lesbian poet. She wrote in French and perhaps English. She took up the style of the Symbolists and Parnassinism and was well known during the era of the Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Age) for producing Sapphic verse and living as an open quasi butch lesbian poet; her verse derived from the ancient poet Sapphos, also famed for her love of women.
# 2 Birth of the Kimonope --- Here I shall introduce the notion of the Kimonope, that is as a garment attached to the social construct of the 'Geisha' in North America. Kimonopes being Orientalized clothing, or 'negatively affiliated or exoticized ethnic dress' which lead to the perceived notion of the Kimono and Geiko as simultaneously both high and low culture to American culture makers, such as film, television, media, writers and some academics. An example of Kimonope are the tacky Halloween costumes you may find at the Dollar store.
#3 The Legacy of the MacArthur Dynasty on KTC & The Problem with the 'Traditional Garment' Argument --- The problem with arguing that the Kimono is a 'Traditional ethnic Garment' is that that assertion is in itself, arguably Ethnocentrism, which to clarify is the imposition of, in this case, American values onto Japanese cultural values, belaying the 3 pronged pitchfork of idiocy.
#4 Divine --- Government name Harris Glenn Milstead (1945-1988) was the infamous North American Queen & Drag artist. Specifically, Divine was known for being a character actor, part of her act is well-known for its eccentricity. My personal exposure to Drag lite was Pantomine Grand Dames as a kid, and later when my friends made me watch RuPaul in art classes, so to me this is nothing new, the over the top, the glitter, the upstaging is all part and parcel.
#5 Dori-Style or 21st century Kimono Fashion --- The Dori-Kimono style. Something which I just made up because in going over notes for the first 20 years of 21st century section of Kimono history, I noticed a lack of a clear catchall term for what was happening in Japan at the time, at least in English descriptions of the time. I use the term Dori as I do not want to coin an unrelated term to the topic, but I also am reticent to claim all of Street style as 'Tori' either, whilst a large number of streets upon which the subculture originates in all use the suffix 'dori' (the bottom of Takeshita-dori for example), thence Dori-style.
#6 The Tea Gown --- This essay will cover the aspects of how 19th century Japanese import textiles to Western countries were used and repurposed, as well what their desirability tells us about how Japanese design was regarded and the image which these people held of Japan through the Western lense and consciousness. This follows the progression of how Kimono can be used in the West from the undress of the 1860s, adapting silk bolts in the 1870s to high fashion western daywear, to the 1880s aesthetic movement and 1890 wholesale adoption in the Victorian age to being used prominently by society hostesses as tea gowns by the Edwardian period, and the subsequent change in Japanese export culture which we see in extant textile collections of Japanese textile in Western dresses of the periods.
#7 Kimono and the Pre-Raphaelite Painters --- This essay will cover the aspects of Kimono in the Portraiture of the Pre-Raphaelites. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of British artists and writers active during the late Victorian period. Unlike the Royal Academy artists, this circle of painters operated outside of the established comfortable boundaries of the expected white, cisgender middle class audience of the Victorian age. The movement is notable for its inclusion and encouragement of women, and in portraying and engaging non-conventional beauty and beauties as figures from the Classical World alongside Religious, Mythological and Folklore Heroines into Victorian 'Femme Fatales'.
#8 Jokyo/Genroku Kimono Textile Culture and the new role of the Komin --- This essay will return back to GKTC (Genroku Kimono Textile Culture ; 1688-1704) and JoKTC (Jokyo K.T.C. 1684-1688) and the new role of the Komin (Artist caste) in GKTC. JoKTC is notable for being the lead up to GKTC, JoKTC being characterised by its transitory nature in comparison to GKTC, which was far more bold in its relations to what Kosode could and should be. Komin entered the picture at this juncture, and I shall elaborate a little more here than in other posts about why that was. GKTC is notable for its elaborate, perhaps gaudy and innovative Kosode design features, whilst JoKTC more so for the enabling factors of the time, as a sort of incubatory GKTC.
#9 Tagasode Byobu - This essay will explore the art motif known in Japanese art as Tagasode Byobu ( Whose sleeves Screen) This motif is a recurring art form which was particularly popular during the Azuchi-Momoyama era ( 1568-1600 ) as a representation of the ways in which Buddhist sensibilities met with the fast changing events of the end of the Sengoku Jidai (1467-1615) and as an extension of the habit of wealthy women from military families came to own and store a large number of Kimono. Prior to this, Kin Byobu ( Golden Screens) for the most part depicted nature like Sesshuu Touyou (1420-1506) after Chinese Cha'an painter Muxi ( c.1210-1269 ) or 'flower-and-bird' scenes like those of Kano Eitoku (1543-1590), rather than humans or human paraphernalia as an extension of the Zen painting school of thought about materialism.
#10 Cultural Acculturation --- The topic of our essay is on the nature of Cultural Exchange in KTC which will be an ongoing mini-series throughout 2022. This covers the 1000CE - 1500 period in Japanese History.
#11 Cultural Appropriation --- The topic of our essay is on the nature of Cultural Appropriation which will be an ongoing mini-series throughout 2022.
#12 Cultural Acculturation --- The topic of our essay is on the nature of Cultural Acculturation which will be an ongoing mini-series throughout 2022. This covers the Asuka (Hakuho), Nara (Tempyo), and Heian periods (500CE-1000CE) in Japanese History.
#13 Asai Ryoi --- This essay will explore the legacy of Asai Ryoi on KTC. Who was Asai Ryoi you may ask? Only one of the most important writers for the Ukiyo genre. Asai Ryoi ( act. 1661-1691 ) was a prolific Ukiyo-zoshi ( Books of the floating world ) or Kana-zoshi ( Heimin Japanese Books ) writer. His leading 1661 publication, lambasted and satirized Buddhism and Samurai culture of restraint in favour of the Chonin lifestyle of worldy excess.
#14 Edith Craig --- This is a post regarding the early adoption and promulgation of the Kimono and Japanese aesthetics in the life of the wonderful Edith Craig (1869-1947), daughter of the famous actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928) and Edward William Godwin (1833-1886). Edith was also known as 'Edy'.
#15 European Banyans --- This essay will explore the European garment known as a Banyan, which originated as a European reaction to Kimono in the 17th century, popular until the end of the 18th century. The word Banyan originates from Arabic ( Banyaan), Portuguese (Banian), Tamil ( Vaaniyan ) and Gujarati ( Vaaniyo ) loanwords meaning 'Merchant'. Alternative versions saw the item fitted with buttons and ribbons to attach the two front sides together. The Banyan was worn by all genders and was particularly regarded in its first iterations as a gentlemanly or intellectual garment worn with a cap to cover the lack of a periwig, and later adopted by women and greatly influenced how British womens garments were designed with preference for comfort in removal of panniers whilst maintaining luxurious, modest 18th century fashions (see Robe a la Anglaise).
#16 Miss Universe and Kimonope --- This essay will explore how Beauty Pageants, principally Miss Universe, has engaged with KTC. While there may be real Kimono worn by Japanese and Japanese adjacent contestants in the 'National Costume' category, I will be focusing on the Kimonope worn by contestants. The idea of Kimono as a 'national costume' sparks interesting conversations on what 'national costumes' are, their target audiences, and how we form ideas about these things to begin with.
#17 Onna-E --- Womens pictures refers to the Nara, Heian and early Kamakura ( 710-1333CE ) practice of drawing women in elongated Hand scrolls, which today are regarded as feminine gender coded Art. Some of these narratives depict the lives of women, their extra diaries, or the literature they wrote. The Onna-E style derives from how mostly Heian women represented themselves and others as a performed self in these scrolls, drawing from their lives indoors at their and the imperial abodes. Whilst a limited number of women could read Kanji, they also used their knowledge of Chinese culture to create and inspire their own culture; the first truly Wamono aesthetics; and it was with these preconditions that Onna-E became established in the Japanese art scene alongside Yamato-E and Oshi-E.
#18 A Jamaican, a Monster and Portuguese bar in the Orient --- This essay looks at the Kimonope attire adopted by North American Dancehall artists Shenseea (Chinsea Linda Lee | 1996 - present ) for the video to 'ShenYeng Anthem'. Whilst the aesthetic derives mostly from East Asian, principally Chinese aesthetics, the language used is specifically Japanese, referring to Chinsea Linda Lee as 'ShenYeng Boss', a perpetuation of the Dragon Lady stereotype. The essay mostly charts how this ridiculous Kimonope derides from the North American Anti-Chinese movement and how this intersects with contemporary Orientalism.
#19 The Red Kimonope --- The Red Kimono is a terribly named racist US silent film from 1925. The Longingist film includes a key scene which the production gets its name from where the protagonist drops her Kimonope, meant to symbolize that she had turned away from sin and prostitution, or in other words equating a wearer of the Kimono as a sex worker which stemmed from another American 'tradition'. This dreadful melodrama features the previously yellowface-accepter Priscilla Bonner as the lead protagonist. Throughout her trials and tribulations, she faces many ups and downs, like becoming a white version of the Lotus Blossom stereotype, because WASPs. I will explore the origins of the Lotus concept and the 'Jade' in more detail here as to provide the contextual background of the productions symbolism.
#20 Housewife, Business Girl, Office Lady --- I explore the concept of the arrival of the Business Girl, and the Shufu ( Censored | Housewife ) of the 1930-1970's period of the 20th century.[1] This intersects with how we see Wafuku represented, in a shifting dynamic that had not shifted so many barriers since the 1870s, and even until the 1990s with the intrusion of Euro/Americentric beauty standards being foisted upon the world during these centuries, in the wardrobes of the upwardly mobile single business women of from 1955-1965. These groups came into being in the 1950s with the advent of the eclipse of settler colonialism and patriarchal standards over women's lives internationally. KTC thus developed in response to these changing, testing and trying times (between 1930-1970).
#21 Herman's 'Kimono' --- In this essay I look at another Kimonope, specifically another Miss Universe 'national costume' entry. This particular Kimonope represents the legacy of Macarthism's neo-colonial/systemic racism, and subjugation of Japanese soft-power, a follow on of Orientalist late 19th/early 20th century assumptions and stereotypes of Asian culture and peoples which saw their subjugation in American foreign and domestic policy between 1885-1952. In this entry, we see a clear leaning into the 'Cool Japan' aesthetic by the Kimonope's designer, who is not shockingly not Japanese, but Israeli and therefore represents ideas about what Kimono are to this designer than the genuine article would to other participants of KTC, foreigner or otherwise towards 'Kimono'.
#22 Uno Chiyo --- This essay explores the work of Uno Chiyo (1897-1996) as a Kimono Designer. Uno was a prolific 20th century Japanese writer and designer. As such, Uno was familiar and fluently versed in KTC throughout her life. Uno founded the influential Style which was in circulation in Japan from 1936-1959.[1] Uno was heavily influenced by Western and Genroku fashion, and focused her aesthetic on these two whilst encouraging masculine and secondhand consumer habits in her approach to Kimono as a fashionable and modern pursuit. Uno provides a fascinating glimpse into a time before Kimono were stigmatized and were instead merged with Yofuku to inform Japanese identity and femininity in new and stylish publications and normoactivities.
#23 Franco-American Singer Dynasty and their Kimonopes - Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943) and Daisy Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg Fellowes (1890-1962) were both American-French socialites, who interacted in many ways with the white elites of the American-French fashion industries. They were heavily complicit in the racist structures and depiction of Kimono as for the 'yellow peoples', with Winnaretta implicitly using Kimono to benefit from racist tropes and imperialism in her career as a painter. This is part of a broader tradition of the French Orientalism genre which would give rise to the Madame Chrysanthemum trope a few years after Winnaretta's use of the Kimonope, in 1883. Daisy, her neice would use these tropes in her time at Harpers Bazaar from 1933-1935, displaying the same ideas about people of colour and their cultural traditions throughout the 20th century as found in her social peers.
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