Prior to 1840, almost everything we knew about the world visually was because someone painted or illustrated it. It was an altogether effective means of communication. Then by the turn of the century, 1900, the first affordable camera was patented by George Eastman, AKA “the Brownie” (although it was black) and since that time, regrettably, there has been no going back. Photography’s mechanical simplicity eclipsed the idiosyncrasy of the hand. While no art medium goes out of style entirely, fashion illustration not only emerged, but also briefly rose in prominence, paralleling the documentary fashion photograph throughout most of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, today’s 21st Century fashion bibles are illuminated solely with dour photographs, many of which are poorly lit, poorly composed, and poorly executed. Cumulatively, they make today’s fashion look even more plaintive than it actually is.
I have always loved fairy tales and their promise of a happy ending...
+Kenneth+Paul+Block+Women+Management+Blog.jpg)
While it may seem unfathomable, once upon a time there was a glamorous world, which caught its first glimpses of collections by Coco Chanel, Paul Poiret, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent, via the exquisitely articulate sketches of people like Kenneth Paul Block. Block was a Prince Charming like character. He died on April 24th, here in New York City, at the tender age of eighty-four. His passing occurred quietly, not in a castle, or swanky Upper East Side salon, as expected, but in an anonymous hospital bed, swathed in those sand-papery white poly-cotton sheets, at St. Luke’s Hospital. St. Luke was coincidentally the patron saint of physicians, surgeons, students, butchers, and artists. Unlike Aurora, no kiss was able to revive Mr. Block. It was a sad demise for an arbiter of style, a regal Rapunzel, a spinner of dreams. The cause was not so much advanced age, poisioned apple or a needle prick, but complications of a fall at his home in Manhattan earlier that week, said Morton Ribyat, Mr. Block’s companion of more than 50 golden years.
All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men….
It was a time of enchantment…
Men wore grey beaver fedoras from Adams Hats, and women still wore starched crinolines, white gloves and strands of pearls when Block joined WWD at Fairchild Publications in the 1950‘s. WWD was truly apart of the “rag” trade. This was back in the day when Mafiosi ruled the Garment District. Like a fish out of water, Block was a progenitor of what was then known as the “Hollywood Regency“ movement,. A style synonymous with theatrical, oversize, dramatic, flourishes, and coincidentally common descriptors of Block and his work. None of that periods matinee joi de vie was lost on Block, whose fondness for silk polka dot ascots from Asprey, white bucks, Holly Golightly cigarette holders and impeccable tailored sports jackets never waned, nor did what one friend described as his Dorian Gray-like youthfulness. Block was a dashing figure of a man.
An ordinary pumpkin becomes a golden carriage…
You might not recall his name, he was notoriously aloof, but you have seen his work. Kenneth Paul Block was America’s most renowned fashion illustrator for Women’s Wear Daily and later for W magazine. His graceful intentional strokes captured the drama of black satin opera gloves, and the immaculately gowned and wasp-waisted women of the 1950’s, and then the more daring, fluid look of later decades.
Block witnessed and recorded for posterity one of the most important periods in fashion history, the post war shift from couture fashion to prêt-a-porter. As the gentility of the 1950’s gave way to the anarchic and ant-chic sixties and beyond, Mr. Block adapted to changing times, altering his style from the ladylike tone of the 1950’s to the cultural quakes of the 1960's, to the disco infused style of the 1970’s. Block always kept pace, though he regretted the loss of dignity in fashion; he lamented the absence of hats and gloves as being de rigor. He longed to recapture those woebegone and intoxicating days of hair carefully coiffed with Aqua Net hair spray and a spritz or two of Channel # 5. Despite his admonition, Block blossomed into Matissian like watercolorist with WWD’s richer cousin, W magazine. Like the ever-changing world of fashion, Block always remained au currant with techniques. His early drawings were mostly done in charcoal and dove white pastels, carefully composed on handmade papers with high rag content, moving from charcoal and graphite to Japanese Sumi-like brush strokes to thick felt-tip markers. To bring a more emphatic look to his later work, he shifted to colored pencil, watercolors and later even black sharpie markers, adding bright gouaches in the 1970’s when illustration had a last brief sun dance in the era of the colored drawings of Antonio Lopez.
He was drawn to style…
In the tradition of his inspirations, Christian Berard, Rene Bouche, Eric, Count Rene Bouet-Willaumez, and all the Bon Ton Magazine artists, Block's drawings are transporting, they cast a magic spell, with an incantation employing vocabulary only old garmentos could decipher. Blocks penchant brought us into rarified atmospheres, letting us see how people of great style looked in those hand tailored clothes, in those Elsie de Wolfe rooms, at those moments, the witching hours, dusk, twilight and early morn. His choices of what he wants us to see are inevitably far richer and more emotionally descriptive than any photograph could ever be. Block was an esquisite editor. How disheartening it is that illustration, which emanated from such a highly refined and personal point of view was beat unto submission like plowshares by the cold clinical camera lens. Block didn't just reticulate pretty dresses in his sketches; he presented the whole social scene in a frame, loosely sketching in the reupholstered arm of a Chesterfield sofa or the dangling facets chiming on a Waterford chandelier, he created in essence graphic novel featuring female superheroes.
Off duty, he also drew, from his imagination: "The people one imagines in one's mind are so much more entertaining. In that way, you escape the problem of the real way people live and dress." Granted, he had never seen Gertrude Stein or Alice B. Toklas, and appreciated them only from photographs, but he drew them in a funny, sad cartoon of contrasted angularity and stolidity. He did portraits of characters from the novels of Ronald Firbank, adjusting their hatpins or clasping their hands in white lace gloves. His merciless, true skewering of Gabrielle Chanel in advanced age is wryly Firbankian, too.
“Drink me”…
Was the tea party over before it began? A question, not posed by Alice, but indicative of fashion’s Carrolian “Looking Glass” world, as before Block’s career began, photography had begun to overtake fashion illustration as the primary method of introducing new styles. Even Block’s extraordinary illustrations were perceived as a handmaiden to the preferred photo editorial. Block tumbled dizzily like Alice through the rabbit hole.
Block was already considered exceptionally good, and when he was recruited to WWD's studio. With the new postwar availability in the US of high-grade coated papers and printing inks, the now glossy magazines editors decided that photography was the future of fashion representation, while the fashion extravaganzas of the 1950’s became so baroque that they had to be photographed, they needed the reality of the lens to counter balace their surreality. In a strange twist if fate it was simply for economical reasons that WWD came out daily in monochrome on low-quality (read: cheap) newsprint, a medium in which even the most striking photographs, (and WWD couldn't afford those), lacked impact, they simply looked leaden. Whereas Block could, and did deliver cheaply reproducible style, nightly, compliant as a soldier on night watch to a strict deadline of 8:00 pm. If Block was anything he was a disciplined craftsman.
"What you are doing is so antiquated," said a lady who lunched, "Artists don't draw in cafes!" But he did. Shades of a Sondheim song comes to mind, “Here’s To The Ladies…Who Lunch!” And being a social butterfly, his took his first lap of the evening's parties, then went back to the offices at WWD; the copy-boy sometimes meticulously taking each leaf of his cocktail napkin to print, as it peeled off Block's block.
"In the 1930’s the American couturier Elizabeth Hawes wrote a book called “Fashion Is Spinach”. I don't know if that phrase can possibly mean anything to anyone now, but I understand it completely. Her concern was to make something very beautiful, very useful, that retained its quality no matter what the fashion of the day might dictate. Shakespeare described fashion as `the deformed thief,' and I agree. For me it's always been about drawing something beautiful and thrilling." Kenneth Paul Block
Sometimes life is like the movies. I see Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in an MGM spectacular, with music by Irving Berlin. Imagine this if you can, Block’s early assignments included sketching ladies in their bonnets and finery, during the Fifth Avenue Easter Parade as they exited St. Patrick‘s Cathedral. Though his pen they became nothing short of behatted goddess’. To this day people still talk about the Easter Parade as a result, despite that there is nary a hat or bonnett in site these days.
"The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in." W. H. Auden
Mr. Block went on to elevate ladies of the social elite and blue bloods like the Duchess of Windsor, Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, Amanda Burden, Gloria Vanderbilt, Judy Peabody, Kitty Miller and C. Z. Guest with his willful pen and pastels. This may be among some of his finest work; like a wizard, he caught them in their natural motion, like a frame of animation, within their complete context. Block held a mirror darkly to a moment (fashion’s Camelot) when the world’s most imitated women were graceful, albeit fierce swans with the magical surnames of Kennedy, Paley, Guinness, and Vanderbilt. It was Block who made them fashion icons. Designers merely dressed them. Among the celebrities he immortalized were Lauren Bacall, Barbra Streisand, Loretta Young, Sophia Loren and Catherine Deneuve. Now another Sondheim’s song play in my mind, “Pretty Woman”, which may very well be a perfect soundtrack for his artistry. The last of the great fashion illustrators, “Kenneth’s image of nonchalant, all-American style influenced not only how other artists depicted fashion but also how actual women comported themselves in real life,” says Vanity Fair Special Correspondent, Amy Fine Collins, who collects Block’s work.
If you ever want to really understand what Truman Capote's 1966 infamous Black-and-White Ball of the Century felt, as well as looked like, you’ll note that the photographers' photos pale in comparison to Blocks illustrated montages, and his written notes on an event were almost as evocative as his art. In retrospect, the photos look like high camp worthy of Bernhardt, whereas Blocks masterful compositions ache with Duse realism.
The Countess Jacqueline de Ribes was among Block’s retinue of portraiture's’. “He was an extraordinary artist,” said de Ribes. “The sketch he did of me is absolutely magnificent. I remember he was a very discreet, very polite and civilized man.”
Block was a gentleman.
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking." Albert Einstein
Part scientist, alchemist and soothsayer, Mr. Block captured more than the obvious cut and flow of his subjects’ apparel. His gift was for something far beyond capturing darts and crystal pleats, his studied drawings were never strictly surface, and always managed to capture the choreography of body language. He sought out what he considered the essence of illustrating style… the gesture: the way a woman drapes a coat over her shoulder; tilts her head; crossed her legs; swings her skirt; and, back in the 1950’s, would hold a cigarette. “I was never only interested in the clothes. I was more interested in the women in the clothes,” Block once said. This is what made him a great illustrator. An illustrator is like a good therapist, they both have the ability to penetrate the epidermis and reveal what lies dormant beneath. ”Gesture to me is everything in fashion,” he told Ms. Mulcahy. who collaborated on his 2007 book, “Drawing Fashion: The Art of Kenneth Paul Block“. “It is in the way we stand, sit, walk and lie. It is in the bone.” A pencil was scapular to him.
Again, Mr. Block’s influence went beyond his own work; a visionary, he helped extend the life of fashion illustration. To him, today’s illustrators owe a bronze statue on 7th Avenue aside the “Old Sewer”, or at the very least a brass plate on the Fashion Avenue Walk of Fame. “Illustration used to be the primary method by which fashion houses introduced styles,” Ms. Mulcahy said, “But by the time Kenneth became prominent, illustration was already on the way out, and photography was popular.” Fairchild Publications was one of the last companies to employ fashion artists, she said, adding that Mr. Block’s “artistry helped keep his profession alive.”
To further point, Block helped keep gay male sensibility alive. Block was a role model, part of the quiet revolution of pre-Stonewall men who managed the rigors of a successful public career, and maintained a healthy (monogamus) relationship. This gave hope to us, their protege's, who were told that setteling down was for squares, and straight people only, and that we weren't worth it. Block was of the generation that instructed the younger generation as to the nuances of a well constructed "gay" life. These men shopped at Sulka's. They told us to watch "Mildred Pierce" and why it was our story too. They interpreted the code. They let us know why we should read the "Gowns by..." credits at the top of a film, and why Adrien trumped Edith Head. They showed us where the "Ninth Circle", and "The Pink Teacup Cafe" was. They were mentors on the ins and outs of camp, vintage, and knew the difference between Art Deco vs. Art Moderne. They introduced food as gourmet, and why there was more to dining than just eating at a table. They turned their sows purse apartments into silk ears. Every time a Kennth Paul Black passes away a piece of our community goes with them. What is it replaced with? Sulkas is now a Duane Reade.
The French have always had a fondness for illustration, as evidenced since primordial man decorated the caves in Lascaux, France, where bison and equine images continue to set the standard for modern primitives, like Block. Enter Yves Saint Laurent, who commissioned Block to illustrate the Dior collections long before the straight press had an opportunity to photograph his pink and cerulean concoctions in hard reductive 35 mm black and whites. Block may very well been from Lascaux in a previous life.
(A St. Laurant version of modern day equines and bison grazing)
Robert Richards, curator of the Society of Illustrators’ recent exhibition “The Line of Fashion,” which featured Block’s work, noted, “There is no better representation of how elegant women looked and dressed during the 20th century than what Kenneth left us. I think a lot of style went out of New York when he died.” Indeed, Gotham has become a dull kingdom since Blocks passing. Alas, the fashion world mourns only as long as it takes the ink in WWD to dry. Richards continues, “The second half of the 20th century was really defined by Kenneth. He understood sociologically the women we sketched, how they dressed, how they carried themselves, how their shoes fit. I can still envision his portraits of Babe Paley and Gloria Guinness. No photo will ever do justice to these women the way that Kenneth Paul Block did.” Robert Richards said he was overwhelmed by the trove of work that he had to choose from at Block’s cubby in Manhattan Mini Storage. “I wanted everything,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t look at any more. It’s all too great.’” Apparently, even Block was overwhelmed by the end result too. When Richards approached him at the show’s initial run, Kenneth had tears rolling down his cheeks. He turned to me and said, “Oh Robert, these are my five favorite drawings.” I imagine that for Block it was like having his five prodigal children for dinner on Christmas.
How is it possible that Blocks work was remanded to a Manhattan Mini Storage Cubicle?
In a Dorian maneuver, Block happened to mention at the Fashion Institute of Technology that all his archives were decomposing in a spare room; volunteers from the institute came by once a week for two years to preserve 6,000 illustrations. Bless you FIT! Resulting in a well-deserved retrospective, including his interiors and travel sketches, they were joyously shown at the Museum of American Illustration in 1999. Still how is it possible that there is not an outcry from the fashion industry to better archive our history as do film historians. Despite the complaints of our woeful economy, America’s fashion industry needs to rise to this challenge, build a museum, and open a study center in the Garment District! Pardon, the newly renamed, “Fashion Center”.
Once more, with feeling, Block helped keep his métier alive. For many years, Mr. Block was chief features artist while at Women’s Wear Daily, working with other notable illustrators like Steven Stipelman, Anneliese Kapp and Robert Melendez. Fairchild closed its fashion illustration department in 1992, when all the company’s artists were let go on the same day. The stench of something foul still lingers. These artists of rank were cast to the street like a pile of ashes, like Cinderella’s. Fashion dailies and weeklies’ or at least their illustrators had become modern day lemmings.
As a cultural barometer, now and again, Block was commissioned to catch the catwalk looks. Some of his 1990’s color work is even better than that from the 1970’s, but the shows that models had themselves become uniforms wearing uniforms, not a unique tilt of the head or obliquity of shin among them. Fashion illustration became obsolete with the advent of the mass marketed supermodels, whose looks trumped the clothing they wore, Cindy, Linda, Christy, Claudia, Kate, Iman and Naomi; and now they too are now almost equally obsolete.
Who had the last laugh?
Please return for the final installment of Fairy Tales And The Fine Art of Illustrating Life: Kenneth Paul Block
