Reviewed by Linda Martin, Customer Service Bibliographer
Jean Muir: Beyond Fashion by Sinty Stemp is a handsome book, not because it's a coffee-table item, but because it is so generously filled with photos of Muir's work.
Muir fell into the fashion business not as the scion of a great atelier or even as a fashion student. Making her own clothes (she was too tiny to find adult off-the-rack clothes) and the visual literacy nourished by an early art history teacher are the only early clues to what she was to become.
She herself, frequently quoted here, denied an interest in "fashion" and said that she could as easily have become an architect or illustrator. However when she arrived at Liberty's of London she embraced the company's values: high quality design of fabric and furnishings and the aesthetic ideals of the 1900's Arts and Crafts movement. Under their tutelage she absorbed both the business of design and the construction of garments.
Her taste for jersey and her understanding of the intricacies of cloth manufacture came with her next tenure at Jaeger, the knitwear company. When she was subsequently offered an excellent opportunity to work with David Barnes, she rejected his mass-market aspirations. Far from feeling rejected, he generously set her up to design her own collection, the Jane and Jane label.
By the 1960's she had broken through the wholesale/couture divide by devoting herself to deconstruction and luxe fabrics. Linings disappeared and were replaced by intricate seaming and structure made in the best of natural fabrics colored with made-to-order dyes. Muir allowed her work to quietly evolve-a not unimpressive feat if one remembers that her contemporaries included Zhandra Rhodes and Betsy Johnson.
Eventually Muir became one of the two most copied designers of the time (Yves St. Laurent was the other) and garnered success in Paris, twenty British Vogue covers and three Dress of the Year awards.
The book gives a good overview of her growth as a designer, but is a little bit slavish and rife with superlatives. This is oddly bothersome as Muir had an impeccable eye and a style so pared to essentials that it is as timeless as fashion gets. Perhaps this drawback is because of the number of people who contributed to the book, each attempting to distill in words the effect of her clothes. Her fierce attention to quality, her craftsmanly details (buttons, buckles and, eventually, jewelry and hats were manufactured by artists for her collections) and the comfortable grace provided by her clothes produced profound loyalties in the clients and friends who attempt to describe her. Only one thing seems conspicuously absent: Muir wrote a "Manifesto for Real Design" that was published by the London Sunday Times in 1994. I would have as much appreciated seeing that as I do seeing the facsimile sketchbook bound into this volume.
Lady Antonia Frasier appropriately quotes Herrick: "Whereas in silks my Julia goes, then, then, (methinks) how sweetly flows the liquefaction of her clothes," but Stemp comes up with a surprising-and perfect-- description after all the hype. She calls Muir's clothing "tranquil." And suddenly I know why I love them.
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