Mister Vintage: Fashion

Art and fashion come close together in this gallery of new styles which are only a little removed from the canvases of great modern painters. Works of Chagall, Leger, Picasso, Mire and Dufy have been reproduced on cotton cloth by a U.S. firm, Fuller Fabrics, and made into early resort clothes by Claire McCardell, most American of designers. LIFE took the clothes to the painters' studios in Europe where, in their first fashion photographs, the artists showed reactions ranging from extreme modesty (Chagall stayed out of the picture) to utter ham. Seen first in these fashions, the prints will be available by the yard next month.

Marc Chagall helped to pose American Ivy Nicholson so that she stood against his Le Soleil Rouge looking as if she were drifting off into the romantic, dreamlike painting. She wears an informal dinner dress ($60) which is made in splotchy springlike colors pat-terned with disembodied figures characteristic of work by Chagall. The photograph was taken in artist's warm, crowded studio in Vence, France.

Two weeks before his death, Fernand Uger posed for final portrait in the Paris studio he had occupied since 1913. The print which British Model Anne Gunning wears is in boldly drawn, boldly colored style of Leger's work—best seen above in his painting of two women and in half-hidden still life. Fabric is made into dinner dress with high neck, long sleeves ($60) in the new ankle length.

Since Raoul Dufy's death in 1953, his widow has lived in the Villa de Cuelma in Nice where her salon is spectacularly hung with 42 of his paintings. In the salon French Model Jacky Maul wears cocktail dress with exaggerated high waist ($40) in pattern of sailboats and waves adapted from Daily seascape. The large painting, Aphrodite, was done in 1935 and worked over again by the artist in 1943. Painting at top left is called The Breakwater.

Spanish Painter Joan Miro has a tiny studio in Barcelona where his artist's brushes and paint tubes are lined up with meticulous care. A painter of gay can-vases, the artist admired the straw hat perched gaily on British Model Margaret Phillips. She also wears a long-sleeved wool jersey bathing suit and wide-skirted pinafore ($58) in print, mostly birds, inspired by a Miro abstraction. Oddments in atelier include a bicycle which Miro modeled of breadsticks and an African sculpture. Behind Miro is the canvas he is now working on.

Permitting this rare photo-graphic session in his new Cannes villa, to California , Picasso received top French Model Bettina Craziani amid the clutter of packing crates and the profusion of paintings completed since he moved in last spring. In his fashion debut, Picasso wears a fedora and carries a sword while Bettina models shirt reproducing a Picasso still life and red wool jersey slacks with elastic at ankles ($55). Carrying on by herself , she wears dress with hack fullness emphasized by pockets ($40) done in fish de-sign from a Picasso ceramic.

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images and info provided by the LIFE Magazine / LIFE Magazine International / LIFE Magazine Atlantic ARCHIVE from the Zetu Harrys Collection