Domino' cape and 'Delphos' dress

Hooded cape for masquerades. Motifs including pinecones, pomegranates, rosehips, and the rose/pink ground colorings have been printed by stencil on beige silk velvet. Byzantine, Renaissance, and Arabesque patterns are actively used in Fortuny’s textiles. The patterns have a fantasy-feel and a dramatic touch, but also a sophisticated beauty, so it does not interfere with the dress’ suppleness, combining the dress with a modern ambience. The material used is rose-pink silk-velvet. This print is of a renaissance style, with motifs of rosehip, pinecones, leaves, cherry blossoms, and pomegranates stenciled. The lining is made of green silk and has similar patterns stenciled. Born in Granada, Spain. Moved to Paris during childhood, but moved again to Venice, Italy in 1890, and spent almost the rest of his life there. He started out his career as a painter, but his works of photography, sculpture, stage art design are also known. He is also an inventor who proposed various machines/materials such as stage lighting, printing paper for photography, dyeing material, and pigments for paint. From his career in stage costume design, he took interest in fashion, and around 1907, he designed “Delphos” a dress with silk satin pleats. This dress, inspired by ancient Greece, was epoch-making due to its way of outlining the natural curves of a woman’s body by the structure of the garment itself, thus eliminating the need to decorate the dress with additional patterns, frills or ribbons. It is known that Marcel Proust repeatedly gives homages to Fortuny’s dress in his novel “A la recherche du temps perdu.” Fortuny also adopted non-western fashion as a design source, and designed coats with a resemblance to kimonos having large sleeves with straight cuttings, and textiles with stencil printings of arabesque patterns.