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| Rebecca Palmer (1884), Crazy Quilt |
Above An example of a
crazy quilt, made with silk and velvet by Rebecca Palmer (1884). Collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Image from
Wikipedia Commons.
When Cubist artworks were first exhibited in the US at the
Armory Show in New York (1913), followed by the wartime adoption of
dazzle painting for ship camouflage (1917), the public compared them to the
crazy quilts at county fairs.
•••
Anon, in “Perth Prattle,”
Sunday Times (Perth, Western AU), Sunday, June 2, 1918, p. 15—
The “camouflage” skirt is here, writes “Lady
Kitty” in the Adelaide Observer. The cretonne skirt is a sartorial disaster.
There is not an article in the whole of ones wardrobe that could possibly “go”
with the skirt. It made its first appearance in Sydney, where six and eight
guineas were asked—and given—for these camouflage skirts. They are of silk, but
such silk! It is most suitably called “crazy.” This demented silk starts at
being a wonderful pattern in colors which absolutely pale the gorgeousness of
all Eastern color magnificence, when suddenly it is camouflaged with great
patches of dullish background. Most weird. Camouflage, you know, is to make
things appear other than what they really are—to disguise them, in fact, so
that the crazy silk sets out to be a very striking fabric which it is suddenly
camouflaged by broad strips of plain color which quite disguise its original
identity, but really make it more striking still. Camouflage parties, at which
people wear camouflaged fancy dress, have become quite a rage for
funding-raising purposes; and if guests are ingenious enough the result is
screamingly funny.
•••
Anon, in The Week, The
World’s News (Sydney NSW), Saturday, April 13, 1918, p. 14—
Dame Fashion is a fool, and that is putting it
mildly. She decrees that women must adopt camouflage for their dress. What need
is there for any such thing? Hasn’t woman camouflaged ever since Eve took Adam in over the apple? Of course she has, and will continue to do it just whenever
it suits her ideas. If she wants to win a post that wheedling won’t accomplish,
she camouflages her face with tears, and lo, she arrives at the desired end.
And what she can do with rouge and powder passes all understanding. It is
camouflage carried to a fine art. What man could tell that the short-frocked,
finely-complexioned, sixteen-year-old hatted person at a distance was over
forty and the mother of six? This is camouflage, and with a vengeance, and yet
Fashion wants to add to it by use of dresses. If it means that plain cotton
stuff at 1s 2d the yard, six yards for 6s 6d, can be so faked by the skillful
dressmaker as to appear like a silk confection at a guinea a yard, by all means
camouflage. But if it means turning a probable ten-guinea costume into a
twenty-pounder, then camouflage is a miserable failure. Everything depends upon
what that fickle jade, Fashion, is after. Usually she strives to deplete the
purse of the hard-working husband or father, but if in this case, as in the
case of ships, the object is to save—then camouflage for ever.
