‘Mode Wien 1914/5’ IV

The object of the Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshop, was to create an aesthetic environment through total design in which buildings, furniture, household utensils, clothing and jewelry all coexist in harmony. In the beginning the products of the Werkstätte were artistically progressive, simultaneously being seen as aimed at a particular segment of intellectual society. However, in 1911, when the workshop’s ‘fashion section’ began its activities, they gradually reached out to a wider range of customers.
The work shown here, ‘Mode Wien 1914/5’ was produced to introduce the new clothes designs that were created by the Werkstätte, but it was not intended for general publication, rather, it was to be placed in the establishments that produced the clothes. Between 1914 and 1915 a total of twelve portfolios were published, the contents of each being quite different and each published only once. One hundred copies of volume one were produced, but only fifty copies of all the subsequent volumes printed. All the works introduced here were contained in volume seven. Dagobert Peche and the other artists involved in the fashion department of the Werkstätte are recognized as having produced the fashion of ‘harem trousers’ and a revival of the fashions of the Biedermeir period. They were not prepared to simply follow the lead of the Paris fashion houses, rather they created their own, unique, Werkstätte style that was most striking.