Harper\'s Bazaar UK - 12.2019

PHOTOGRAPHS: BILL SILANO, STEPHEN COLHOUN, GLEB DERUJINSKY, © VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON, TOM PALUMBO, GETTY IMAGES, © YEVONDE PORTRAIT ARCHIVE

December 2019 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | 147

For women, driving was synonymous

with the freedom to roam. ‘Cars didn’t

invent speed,’ remarks Cormier, ‘but they

democratised it.’ With the introduction of

the Ford Model T in 1908, which was afford-

able to the masses, far more people could

enjoy independence. As motorcars flooded

into the economy, they also captured the

imagination in literature and pop-

ular culture, selling a new brand

of contemporary femininity. In The

Great Gatsby, the alluring Jordan

Baker is a modern woman at the wheel, albeit a reckless

one (she is described by Nick Carraway as a ‘rotten driver’);

and the hedonistic Agatha Runcible in Vile Bodies drunkenly

enters a motor race in her ‘English Plunket-Bowse’. ‘The

truth is,’ writes Waugh, ‘that motor cars offer a very happy

illustration of the metaphysical distinc-

tion between “being” and “becoming”.’

The appeal of the car crossed over

into fashion: from the 1920s onwards,

owning a vehicle became associated

with being a style-conscious, emanci-

pated woman. Driving clothes were

practical, allowing the wearer to stay

warm (especially in early automobile

models where the driver was exposed),

but they also signalled empowerment

and status. The exhibition includes an

Italian print of a woman wearing a thick

fitted sweater and skirt in a typically

Twenties style. ‘She’s lying on her back under her car doing some

repairs, and it’s obviously supposed to look a bit racy,’ says Bisley.

Such outfits were a departure from the restrictive corsets and formal

clothing of the Victorian era, allowing for more movement of the

body; they enabled women to perform the same roles as men, but

perhaps with a little more style and panache. Early racing caps, for

instance, were elegant expressions of modish modernity, epitomised

by a 1938 photograph of the racing driver Jill Thomas, dressed head

to toe in red.

Magazines and advertisements sold the idea that cars repre-

sented much more than just a means of transport. ‘Conduire une

Peugeot,’ shouted a 1933 brochure, ‘c’est “être à la mode”’ (‘To drive

a Peugeot is “to be in fashion”’). In the eye-catching image, the car

itself is barely visible except for its steering wheel; all of the focus is

on the female driver, whose arms are covered by smart white gloves

and who wears a stylish slick of crimson lipstick, the picture of

relaxed chic.

‘There’s a really long history of fashion informing cars and vice

versa,’ says Cormier. For example, the popularity of heavily stream-

lined car designs with exaggerated tailfins seems to have triggered

a vogue for similarly futuristic-looking sartorial creations, such as

the cloche hat of the late 1920s, with its close-fitting bell shape and

multiple folded pleats. In the April 1958 issue of Bazaar, an article

on ‘Haute Couture Cars’ by the journalist Veronica Meagher dis-

cussed the links between automobile manufacturers and fashion

houses. ‘The designers in both industries work along strikingly

similar lines,’ she wrote. ‘The fashion designer must cut his cloth to

cover and adorn a woman’s body; the coach worker must construct

an elegant sheath to fit the car’s engine, attaching a furnished car-

riage at the back.’

The parallel evolution of these two sectors helped fuel the idea

that developments in technology and design were not off-limits to

women, but more accessible than ever. Bill Silano’s colourful photo-

shoot for the March 1967 issue of Bazaar, titled ‘The Foot and

Ferrari’, celebrated the covetable beauty of shoes that were ‘as

dynamic, as fast-moving, as marvellously contemporary as motor

racing itself’. Like fashion,

which has always forged its

own path, cars became a

symbol for everything that

was new and exciting, invit-

ing women around the world

to turn on their engines and

speed ahead into the future.

‘Cars: Accelerating the Modern

World’ is at the V&A (www.

vam.ac.uk) from 23 November to

19 April 2020.

TALK ING POINTS

Top left: Jill

Thomas in 1938.

Clockwise from far

left: a cloche hat

made in 1928.

A look from

the May 1955

issue of Bazaar.

Dorothy Levitt,

‘the fastest girl on

Earth’, in 1908

A fashion shoot

from Bazaar’s

September

1954 issue