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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Lee Miller: Fashion in Wartime Britain, an interview with Ami Bouhassane and Amber Butchart
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- [00:00]
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April Callahan
And conditions 18 Please enjoy this episode from the Dressed Archive. We will be back with season eight and all new dressed content in February 2025.
- [00:46]
Cassidy Zachary
With over seven billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day we all get dressed.
- [00:52]
April Callahan
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts.
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Cassidy Zachary
Cassidy Zachary and April Callahan. So, Cass, the subject of today's podcast, was once described by a friend as, quote, an American free spirit wrapped in the body of a Greek goddess.
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April Callahan
Wow. I want someone to describe me like that.
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Cassidy Zachary
Right? And of her own life. She also once remarked that she, quote, didn't waste a minute. All my life. And by the end of this episode, Dress listeners, I'm sure that all of you will certainly agree because for the last four seasons of Dressed, I have really wanted to do an episode on the inimitable, the fearless and the force of nature that was Lee Miller.
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April Callahan
And it is because Lee's life and career was so incredibly extraordinary that we will focus on but a small sliver of it today. And that is the year surrounding World War II. So perhaps April, a brief bio is in order to set the scene before we introduce today's guest. Shall we?
- [01:57]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes, certainly. Please take it away.
- [02:00]
April Callahan
Born Elizabeth Miller in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, Lee, as she was later known, was often the subject, growing up, of her father's amateur photography. This role of model would turn professional following a chance meeting with Vogue publisher Conde NAST in 1927. Described as, quote, one of the most beautiful women of the 20th century, Lee now found herself in the position of model and muse to now legendary photographers and modern artists that included celebrities. Some people you may or may not have heard of, Edward Steichen, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Man Ray.
- [02:35]
Cassidy Zachary
And Man Ray went on to become not only Miller's lover, but also her teacher. And get this is how this went down she tracked him down in Paris with an introduction letter from Picasso in her hand, presented it to him and summarily informed him that she was his new photography student. This really describes her fearlessness and her personality. And after she started setting for photography, it wasn't long before she transitioned from taking her own self portraits to the other side of the camera. No longer the model, but the photographer on fashion shoots. And then in the early 1930s, she set up her own photography studio in New York City. And there she quickly found success in both commercial photography, fashion photography and also fine art photography. Working in the surrealist genre, Lee married.
- [03:27]
April Callahan
Egyptian businessman Aziz aloui Bey in 1934 and the couple lived in Cairo for several years before Lee returned to Paris. She did this in 1937 and it was reportedly because she was disillusioned with her marriage and life in Egypt. It was now in Europe that today's story picks up and we are so delighted to welcome not one but two guests to today's show. Amy Buhassein, Lee Miller's granddaughter, joins us, as does fashion historian and past dress guest Amber Butchart. They join us to discuss their book Lee Fashion in Wartime Britain, which also features contributions by Robin Muir. This book accompanies an exhibition of Lee Miller's fashion photography currently on view in East Sussex, England, where Amy serves currently as a trustee and co director of the Lee Miller Archives, the Penrose Collection and Farley's house and Gallery on the site of her grandparents former estate.
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Cassidy Zachary
And many of our listeners may already know Amber as a media personality in the uk. She is the host of the wonderful television series A Stitch and Time, which is now available in the US On Netflix and also her appearance on the Great British Sewing Bee. So check out both of her television shows.
- [04:41]
April Callahan
Ladies, thank you for joining us today.
- [04:44]
Cassidy Zachary
Ladies, thank you so much for joining us today on Dressed. What a treat to get to speak with you both about Lee Miller.
- [04:51]
Amber Butchart
Thanks so much for having us. This is lovely.
- [04:53]
Cassidy Zachary
Amy, my first question is for you. Your grandmother really led an exceptional life. It might not have always been perfect, but she was really one of those avant garde spirits and a shining example of the quote unquote, modern woman of the early 20th century who really thought for herself and moved through the world as she saw fit. She was in her 20s in Paris during the 1920s, which was an incredible period of time to live through, I'm sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think she passed around the time that you were born born. So you have gotten to know her through your family and also your work. And you have been the trustee of Leah's extensive archive and also the co director of her former estate, Farley's House. And I think we're going to touch on the significance of Farley's House a little bit later in the episode. But you have been working with your grandmother's work professionally for the last 20 years. So could you tell us a little bit about the Lee Miller archives? And I do believe that a lot of the images that are included in the book haven't really been seen before or perhaps since their original date of publication, which in many cases was around 75 years ago.
- [06:04]
Amy Buhassein
She is amazing, isn't she? I feel really privileged that she's this inspiring woman that like broke boundaries and super lucky to have been able to work and care for her legacy. And the fact that it's my own family history as well, so I get paid to work on my family history. The archive, Scott, more than 60,000 negatives. We hold 20,000 vintage prints, more than 20,000 pages of manuscripts and notes that she made, as well as we actually have some of her original clothes too. And yeah, you're right, the most of the pictures in the book haven't been seen since they were first published. So this, the book and the exhibition are. Is quite exciting for us.
- [06:51]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes. How long has the archive been in working order?
- [06:55]
Amy Buhassein
It started actually, it's partly my fault because as you said, I was born just actually three months before Lee died. So we met, but we didn't get to have any great chats or anything. Although apparently I was sick on her shoulders. So I think I'm one of the few people in the world that can claim to have vomited on Lee Miller. But basically my mum wanted baby pictures of my dad to compare us and she asked my granddad Roland, where she might find any and he was like, I think there might be some. Some boxes in the attic of some pictures right at the back. Have a little look. So she went up and instead of finding baby pictures of my dad, she found the Lee's first combat manuscript that she. Where she was writing about the siege of Saint Marlow and the photographs of the bombing and the fighting. And she brought it down and showed it to my dad and he had no idea that his mum had done that and he just was gripped and wanted to find out who she really was, what she'd really done. And there and then the two of them started the Lumina archives and it's been going for 43 years.
- [08:10]
Cassidy Zachary
It's amazing. I would love to come visit someday and see all of the treasures that are surely in there. Many of them, of course. I think there's around 100 images in the book, and the book actually encompasses but a slice of Lee's career as a photographer, specifically her work in British fashion during the years of World War II, from 1939 to early 1944. So, Amber, question for you. As our fashion historian, I'm hoping you might be able to tell us a little bit about what sort of impact World War II had on British fashion, particularly during these first few years of the war.
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Amber Butchart
The first few months of war alone had a huge impact on, of course, on everything in Britain. The cost of living itself rose by about 25%. So things became hugely more expensive. It was much, much more difficult for people to go about their lives as they had done before the war, for a number of reasons. And this also hugely impacted the way that people were dressing. And there were a few different reasons for that. Firstly, you start to see huge numbers of people in uniform. Like, people in uniform really proliferated. Not only people who were seeing active service on the fronts, the war fronts, but also people working in auxiliary services in Britain, really all over the place. And with that focus on uniform, you start to see other aspects of really formal fashion dropping out of view a bit, becoming less important. Evening dress, for example, you get some reports in fashion magazines talking about how embarrassing it would be if you were wearing a really fancy evening gown next to someone in uniform. And so there's this real shift, especially for, I guess, people who would be reading sort of society magazines, there's this real shift in terms of the codes of clothing that are acceptable.
- [10:11]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, I think maybe we'll talk about this a little bit at the end of the episode, but I think that there are some very distinct parallels to be made to what's happened to all of us in 2020 and 2021 in terms of the predominance of less formal modes of dressing. Amy, my next question is for you, because of course, your grandmother was American. She was born in New York State. And how did she find herself in London at the outbreak of World War II? Because really, this was a period of time when Americans in Europe were returning back to the States for the comparative safety of America, not necessarily venturing out into the world towards the conflict.
- [10:52]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, it's backwards. But then she quite liked to challenge things throughout her life. She moved mostly because of. To London, mostly because of my granddad. He'd been trying to woo her for two Years away from her Egyptian husband. It was just very bad timing that they arrived in England on the day that Britain declared war. But she wrote to her older brother John back in Poughkeepsie, New York, that she felt that she'd fought and struggled hard years ago to live in Europe and choose her friends and their way of living, and that she couldn't leave now just because there was a scarcity of butter. And she also felt that maybe with the photography work that she was doing that might help buy a gun. So she wanted to do what she could, even though America hadn't yet become part of the war.
- [11:44]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And what she did, the part that she played, had a great deal to do with British Vogue. They'd scoop her up and recruit her to work for them pretty much right away. And can you tell us a little bit about the circumstances of her employment at British Vogue? Because they really put her to work and she also had this long standing relationship with American Vogue. If you could touch on that a bit. Yeah.
- [12:08]
Amy Buhassein
Originally she was an American in England and she didn't have a working visa, so she couldn't work. She got a letter from American Vogue asking her. They asked her if she could go and work at British Vogue, but actually she's. And run the studio there. But she actually started off just by volunteering because she didn't have a working visa. She worked freelance for them throughout the war. But she became, really early on, she became British Vogue's main contributor because most of the male photographers had been called up and they really needed somebody that could step into it and knew the high standards of Vogue photography. She'd worked for American versus start off as a model in the late twenties. But by September 1930, she'd transitioned to the other side. She was in Paris and her photography of fashion was appearing in American Vogue.
- [13:01]
Cassidy Zachary
She.
- [13:02]
Amy Buhassein
So she was contributing to American Vogue from Paris and then when she went back to New York in 1932, she also worked for them there. So they knew. They knew that she was. Had a good standard of photography.
- [13:14]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And in addition to her amazing editorial spreads that she was producing for the magazine, they had her working on all sorts of other catalogs and projects. And is there anything that she couldn't do? She was a powerhouse, basically.
- [13:29]
Amy Buhassein
She was absolutely prolific. No, I don't think. There was an amazing imagination and an amazing creative flair. You've got to imagine that. Also, like Vogue Studios was bombed. Once it caught fire a couple of times, the maid, sometimes they had to work with the neighboring building. Still smouldering so often they couldn't use the studio, they were going out into the streets. She was having to find weird locations to do the shoots and these ways of showing things that weren't previously fashionable and making them look fashionable and appealing.
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Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And Amber, it's noted in the catalog for the exhibition, the book that we're discussing today, that and I love the fact that you guys have alighted the name of British Vogue to just refer to it moving forward as Brogue. This is the first time I have heard this.
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Amy Buhassein
That's what they called it. And French Vogue was called Frogue, but that's what they called it at that time.
- [14:30]
Cassidy Zachary
I don't know how it's a fashion historian. I've completely missed this fact, but it's great. I'm going to use it from now on. But apparently Brogue never skipped a single issue during the six years leading up to and surrounding the war. So, Amber, why was keeping the fashion press moving forward important at this time?
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Amber Butchart
This was important because this was obviously a time where there are fewer channels of communication than we have today. And so women's magazines like Brogue worked quite closely with the Ministry of Information so that they could be a real source of information, of tips, providing this quite useful information to their readers. Now, it wasn't without, entirely without controversy. There was in fact a Welsh MP who really complained, was absolutely outraged that Vogue was being published, still was being published on quite superior paper. And he was full of essentially what he termed ads for luxury products. It was seen as really out of kilter with a lot of the directives that were coming from the Board of Trade and things like that and the governments. But it did have to hugely reduce the amount that it was. It was down to about 19.5% of the pre war usage of paper, things like this. And it did genuinely provide an important role, important information for women. Also the editor, Audrey Withers, who had a fantastic relationship with Lee Miller, she really encouraged women to share their copies of Vogue. And there was a survey done after the war that said they believe that each issue of Vogue had probably been read by about 14 different women.
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Cassidy Zachary
Oh, wow.
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Amber Butchart
Yeah. So we are seeing a huge amount of sharing of this and of this it becoming a real tome, you know, providing really important information and also directives.
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Cassidy Zachary
That wander into My next question for you because as we move further into the war period, many different forms of rationing were put in place, including clothing rationing. Can you tell us a little bit more about this, how the system for rationing worked in Britain. And also a little bit about the amazing, incredible government scheme for utility fashions.
- [16:49]
Amber Butchart
Yes, for sure. Clothing rationing came into effect in Britain in June, in 1941. And this was announced over the radio and they kept it a little bit quiet because they didn't want. And again, similar to what we saw during the pandemic last year, with people panic buying. They didn't want people going out and panic buying. They wanted to just be able to introduce this and without too much fuss, essentially. So it was declared. It was declared over the radio. And what with this is that you get coupons being introduced. Clothing rationing is essentially the implementation of state controlled production to ensure fairer distribution. And I think that's really important to keep in mind because it was helpful in that it conserved materials for the war effort. It also certainly conserved labor for the war effort. We're seeing some factories being requisitioned for war use. But crucially, we've seen this huge inflation in the cost of living in the first months of war alone. And there is no equal access to clothing. And so that is brought about with rationing needing coupons as well as money to be able to buy clothing. And then also the utility apparel order, which is brought in the next year in 1942. And this lasts for about a decade. Like we're seeing this last into the 1950s. It's not just the actual period of warfare. So with utility clothes, they're made from a sort of limited range of quality controlled fabrics. So again, this is all about creating efficiency in factories. And it also means that there's a really solid caliber of price regulated clothing being produced. So again, it's about fairer distribution. So it's really, in terms of fashion history, it's really interesting period in British history because it is this state regulation, the kind of which we haven't seen before or since really. But it meant the idea behind it was about people, whether you're rich or whether you're poor, being able to access quality clothing.
- [18:56]
Cassidy Zachary
I've had the occasion one time in museum collections to see several different pieces of garments from the utility scheme. And also I randomly found one in a vintage store many years ago that.
- [19:09]
Amber Butchart
Is the holy grail of vintage shopping.
- [19:11]
Cassidy Zachary
And I was shopping with a fellow fashion historian friend and she was already working on this kind of period. So I was like, it's yours, it's yours, it's yours. Take it before I take it.
- [19:21]
Amber Butchart
It sounds so kind.
- [19:22]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, but it would. It was one of those kind of thrilling moments when your heart starts beating really fast. And you're like, oh, they don't know what that is, but we know what that is. So that was very fun. And I think that some of our listeners might be rather surprised to learn that a few of the top British designers of this period were actually contributing designs to the utility clothes. Why? Was their participation important?
- [19:47]
Amber Butchart
Yes. The same year that the utility scheme launches, you see the introduction of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers. Fantastic name, which was shortened to Ink Sock, which, like you say, was some of the top British designers of the day grouping together for this particular purpose. People like Norman Hartnell, Digby Morton, bianca moss, etc, etc. Now, one of the real reasons for this was about creating clothing for exports. And this is actually a real line that you see running through both British Vogue and American Vogue in the first few years of war as well, is that American readers are really encouraged to buy British fashion because it will. I think there was an article that said it will. Fashion pays for planes and supplies. This idea that Americans buying British fashion is really doing your bit for the war effort. And so a lot of these ink stock designers are creating designs for export. Now, the government also gets them on board to anonymously create some designs for the utility scheme with the aim of really glamorizing the image of this utility clothing. Also, as part of rationing, there are austerity directives that are brought in saying how much you can have on your seams, how long hems can be, how many pockets you can have, again to conserve materials. But this austerity directives sounds pretty drab, obviously. And so I think bringing in the Ink Sock designers was really a means of just encouraging people to stick with the program, basically. This can be glamorous, this can be fun. And you who have seen some of the utility pieces, some of them are absolutely gorgeous. There is definitely. There were no restrictions on colour. Some of the pieces you can find in collections and museums in the UK are really bright, really nice designs. It's not sure exactly how many of the Ink Sock designs went into production, but you can find some in collections in museums here. And it was certainly a really important marketing drive.
- [21:56]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, for sure. And for a fashion photographer who is used to having so many resources at their fingertips in terms of styling, a shoe and beautiful, extravagant designs that they're going to feature, I'm sure this period's austerity measures were a little bit of a challenge for Lee, but she took them on with great aplomb, I would argue. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns dress listeners. The New Year is upon us and with the annual refresh of our calendars, so too comes our personal list of New Year's resolutions. And if you're anything like me, every year that includes contributing more to my investment and savings accounts. But as the months go by and expenses arise and opportunities appear, I don't always meet my savings goals.
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- [25:13]
Cassidy Zachary
Amy, how do you feel the war evidenced itself in her fashion photography from this period?
- [25:22]
Amy Buhassein
Sometimes it's subtle hints, other times it's a bit more obvious. There's a couple of images of fashion models in front of piles of rubble and that's, oh, there is a war on. But it's also included purposefully because some of these pictures were going to be going to American Vogue, and it was another way of getting that message across. Some of them are less obvious. There's a maternity coat with this amazing kind of crisscross pattern in black. It looks like it's black and white, so the picture is black and white, but it's a crisscross pattern along the back. And Lee shot the woman from the back in the street. And on the street, the trees have similar lines painted on them, which looks like it's supposed to be part of the set, but actually the lines are painted on the trees because during the Blitz, you couldn't have street lights. And the white lines was to stop people from driving into the trees as they go down the road. Or occasionally there's a Malbec coat fashion shot where the woman's in the middle of Hampstead Heath, which is a big kind of grassy park in London. And in the distance, in the sky, you can see defence barrage balloons in the air. So it ranges.
- [26:35]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And these are incredible descriptions that you have just provided for us. There are approximately 100 images in the book and I'm sure both of you have favorites. Would both of you pick one or two and describe them for our listeners?
- [26:49]
Amber Butchart
Some of my favorites are some that I actually referenced in the catalogue as well. It's from a shoot called Fashions For Factories. And what I love about these is that it really shows how Vogue as an institution helped to shift the paradigm of femininity through fashion. And that was really one of the key roles of the information coming through in Vogue was to say, you can work in a factory, you can work in the auxiliary forces. Whatever you do, you can still be glamorous. Because there was still this idea, the Board of Trade in 1940 had said, you must remain to keep up your Morale. You must maintain a good appearance if you're a woman. Obviously if you're a man, it doesn't matter, but if you're a woman, that's what you have to do. And so these pictures are women working in factories wearing boiler suits. And it is just pure utilitarian chic. Essentially. You're seeing these quite tailored boiler suits with tapering legs, tapering in at the ankles and little puffed shoulders as well. So there's clearly been an eye on fashion, which is also what the writers in Vogue were encouraging for uniforms. You know, think about fashion as well when you're creating uniforms for women to wear. And they do up the back with these buttons and they're just absolutely glorious. And it's the sort of thing you could see again. Now, work wear is so en vogue at the moment that I think you could really see these images in vogue. And it just shows women at work. For me, it really sums up the best of that kind of wartime glamour.
- [28:27]
Cassidy Zachary
They're really beautiful. It's interesting because we see parallels in the United States as well with American designers designing specific collections for women doing war work in the factories, which is quite interesting. Amy, do you have a favorite or two?
- [28:41]
Amy Buhassein
It's really hard already. These hundred came out of 6,000 negatives because Leigh was so prolific. And that's why we wanted to put this book together is because Leigh is known for her war correspondent work when she's reporting with the American forces as they're going through Europe. But actually she was prolific and she. She had so many pictures. So this 100 is our favorite 100 from 6000. What I love about her fashion photography in general is that she allows the models a lot of the time to have their own personality. They're not deadpan. You know, there's a couple of really sassy looking ladies. And I don't know a lot about fashion, so I can't talk about wonderfully tailored boiler suits like Amber can. But I just. I love that you feel the essence of the model, you feel the essence of Lee and the imagination. Like one. In one shot, there's a gorgeous suit with a hood and the model was holding a cat. And then the background Lee's chosen is a load of egg boxes just plastered on the wall, like the cheap version of soundproofing a room. She's done that. Or for a shoot that she's done for woolen clothes, Woolen warms. She's chosen to do the shoot in a taxidermist shop. So you've got all these stuffed Animals around these ladies that are trying to look warm in the winter. It's just. I love it because it shows her personality and it's different and unique.
- [30:15]
Amber Butchart
I love that picture with the cat. It's so good. And also similar to the taxidermy, there's a series of pictures that she's taken of women going about their business. So there's one of this woman wearing this beautifully tailored skirt suits, and she's shopping for mops, and I really like those.
- [30:34]
Amy Buhassein
And another one where she's holding a bunch of radishes and you're like, why radishes?
- [30:39]
Cassidy Zachary
Working with what you got.
- [30:41]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, totally. But I love that. I just love. You can see that she's got such a flair. And I think although it's austerity and although she has to, she and Audrey Withers, the editor of Vogue, were really trying to push the idea of promoting British fashion and what needed to be done to help the war effort, that she really does it with flair and imagination, despite the restrictions.
- [31:07]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And I think one could argue that she had spent years in front of the camera, so she knew both sides and she knew what to ask from those models and how to extract it from them as well.
- [31:21]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, I think so. I think she also knows how to make them feel comfortable.
- [31:27]
Cassidy Zachary
I'm really glad you mentioned what needed to be done for the war, because in the book it's noted that one of Lee's biographers observed she realized that Vogue could be a powerful weapon of war.
- [31:40]
Amy Buhassein
She knew that she was a woman. She's not allowed to fight. And even when she became a woman war correspondent in December 1942, she actually was part of the Female Women's War correspondence. Accreditation is that you're not allowed to cover combat. So she couldn't. She knew she couldn't carry a gun. So what's her next best weapon? It's her camera. And she knew that by. By shooting that fashion, by promoting short hair. So you. For factory workers, the turban as a. As a way of keeping your hair back was something that she covered in the Fashion Factories article and constant articles about having your hair back, having your hair short. It was essential for women to do that. But before that, long hair had been the elegant fashion. She felt that this was the best way that she could fight and help her friends in Paris. Paris was occupied by the Nazis quite early on, and many of her really close friends were still there. And she had such a connection with the place.
- [32:46]
Cassidy Zachary
I think the war surrounding her while she is working at a fashion magazine was obviously on her mind, because Robin Muir, in his essay, which is also in the book, he actually quotes Lee writing to her parents in 1941, saying, it's pretty silly to go on working on a frivolous paper like Vogue, Though it may be good for the country's morale, it's hell on mind. So this internal conflict on her end is obviously present probably for years. And partway through 1944, she shifts gears away from fashion. And I'm hoping one of you can touch on how she continued to contribute to Vogue over the next 18 months. Because she wasn't necessarily shooting fashion.
- [33:34]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah. Once she got her war correspondence pass in December 43, she initially used that to give her access to photograph what other women were doing in Britain. So she covered the women in the Royal Navy, the Wrens, the Women's Land army, the ats, Searchlight Battery, and then as soon as she could, she was itching to be able to do more relevant content. And it's crazy when you see the articles that she dispatched from the front, starting just after D Day in Normandy, and as she's following the US army in the 83rd Division, mostly, you couldn't imagine those appearing in Vogue today, the way that she writes, the vivid images of conflicts that are there. But when she got to Paris, at the liberation of Paris, she was asked by British folk and American folk to stay there and help relaunch French folk. So she's going off to cover the Battle of the Bulge, all the fierce fighting in Alsace and the liberation of Luxembourg, coming back to Paris, shooting French fashion to send to Britain and to help relaunch French folk. So fashion is always there, but it's kind of in between battles.
- [34:46]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. My mind just blown. How can you do this? How can your mind switch gears like that so easily? And to see some of the things that she saw on the battlefield. Because she was at the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald as well, Correct?
- [35:01]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah. She was at four of the prison camps she went to Ohrdf, penning Buchenwald, and then she was at the liberation of Dachau the morning after. And what she witnessed was horrific. And it was something that would haunt her for the rest of her life as she had to learn to live with those images and suffered what from what today is known as ptsd, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And in those days, they didn't even have a name for it. You just put up and shut up and did the British stiff upper lip thing and got on with things. But there was a lot of people post war wasn't just her that really had so much to deal with in their mental well being.
- [35:45]
Amber Butchart
I think it's also important as well to remember what Amy said earlier about women correspondence not being able to cover fighting. She ended up at the siege of Sao Malo by accident. There was like a communication error and she ended up there and fighting was still ongoing and she ended up pretty much being the only reporter on like her body of work is so incredible, like you were saying, just incredible. The things she was seeing and she. For that in particular, she wasn't even supposed to be there. And she got a sort of slight sort of telling off afterwards because she wasn't supposed to be reporting on this actual service. And she was also writing articles as well by this point to accompany the pictures. And her writing is incredible. She was an amazing writer as well as an amazing photographer. She was really able to encapsulate the emotion that went so vividly with the picture she was taking. It really is just unbelievable. And the fact that this was featured in Vogue is just staggering.
- [36:55]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And something. It was an unusual move at the time for a fashion magazine to cover the war this extensively. And some of these images are quite graphic.
- [37:04]
Amy Buhassein
But you have to remember that at this time women didn't really read newspapers. Women only really read fashion magazines. So this was sometimes the only way that they would know what was happening. And when Audrey Withers was the British Vogue editor was interviewed about it, she said it just made Vogue that more relevant and that more topical to its. Its female audience at the time.
- [37:28]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah.
- [37:28]
Amy Buhassein
And what am said about Lee's writing is so true. I think part of it is because she was expelled from school about four times and she didn't have any formal training as a writer. So she. But she was really well read, she loved books. But so when she writes there's no pretense, there's no kind of trying to follow some literates style. She just says it how she sees it and it's really gritty and really raw and you really, you feel like you're sitting with her even though that was written 75, 80 years ago.
- [38:01]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah.
- [38:02]
Amber Butchart
It's also really interesting seeing the different reactions of the Vogue editors to what they would publish of her work as well. Because there was, especially with the prison camp, the concentration camp images, there was a real difference in what Audrey Withers published in Vogue and then what Edna Woolman Chase published in American Vogue. And there's a really brilliant book called Dressed for War about Audrey Withers by Julie Summer Which I would really recommend anyone to read who's interested in this period as well as the book we're discussing today, of course. And just seeing those discussions and how they decided how to handle these images that you would never, under any other circumstances, imagine being published in a fashion magazine is really fascinating to read.
- [38:49]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah.
- [38:50]
Amy Buhassein
I think by the time the death camp pictures came out, Britain was just. It also reflects. It also reflects the mood of the different nations. By the time the prison camp images were coming from Lee to British Vogue, the British public had just had enough of the war and wanted it to be over. Whereas in the American papers, it was more. It seems like it was more. They were like, this is why we went to war. And they were showing them. This is why we went in and this is why we made the decision to join. And that big is more than a whole page image that they published in American Vogue under the title Believe it, which is a pile of dead bodies, skeletal dead bodies piled up like a wood pile, is just a huge hitting. And I could not imagine it being published today.
- [39:45]
Cassidy Zachary
Seeing it now, even after seeing many images my entire life, it still hits pretty hard.
- [39:51]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah.
- [39:52]
Amber Butchart
I think even more because it seems so incongruous in a magazine like Vogue. That contrast, I think, makes it somehow brings it home even more.
- [40:05]
Cassidy Zachary
Perhaps we should turn our attention to it a little bit happier. Question mark. Of a period of her war photography. She was also, as Amy already mentioned, at the liberation of Paris in August of 1944. And she photographed and wrote quite extensively about some of the occupation styles and also the state of Parisian chic after four years of Nazi subjugation in Paris. And she had some incredibly interesting observations on how the clothing restrictions played out in Britain versus occupied France. Amber, how were austerity measures received by the public? And was the sentiment or what happened in France different? Some of our regular listeners might already know the answer to this, but for.
- [40:54]
Amber Butchart
People interested in fashion history, this. The whole end of the Second World War and then two years later you have Christian Dior's new look. There's so much mythologising about this particular period. And so for me, when I began really in depth researching Lee Miller's work in this area, I was so fascinated by the absolutely central role that she played in all of these discussions that were happening, because it was from her reporting back to British Vogue, the fashions that some women in France were wearing were just so completely different. And people in Britain were just outraged by the fact this could be happening. There was a labor paper called the Daily Herald. And they talked about, they reported on Paris as being a city of staggering contrasts. Expensive perfumes in the shop windows, coupons for bread, fashion parades in extravagant salons, queues for potatoes. And I think that summed it up quite nicely. And you can really see this contradiction and this tension in a lot of the fashion reportage that Lee Miller is doing from Paris, from the Liberation, because there's this huge debate over the question of collaboration, essentially. And this is covered in a huge amount of detail, really brilliantly, as I'm sure a lot of listeners to this podcast will know, in a book called Paris Fashion and World War II, edited by Lou Taylor and Marie Mc, which is absolutely fantastic. And this notion of Lucien Lelong, the head of couture in France, he managed to keep the industry in France when the Nazis wanted to move it to Berlin or to Austria. He claimed he succeeded in saving many jobs and potentially people's lives however they had to. There was forced Aryanization under Nazi rule. It was this question of is this collaboration or is this not collaboration? And Lee's reporting is really at the center of that. And they allowed Lucien Lelong to. To put forward his own opinion in conversations that happened throughout various different international vogues, because she was also then helped to reinstate French vogue as well. But you can see there is a bit of contrast in the way that she's writing about the French fashions that she's seeing. And she's talking about it as an act of resistance, which is also very interesting for fashion theorists to consider, because I think this is something that we think about quite a lot in fashion education, especially as April, like this idea of fashion as resistance. And it's something she's talking a lot about this idea that, yes, of course, French women are wearing these huge billowing skirts because it's a sign of defiance against the Nazis. Whereas that was viewed very differently in Britain. And even in 1947, when Dior's new look is launched, Britain is still seeing fabric rationing. We still have the utility clothing, and the Board of Trade really speak out against these styles, even at that point, two years after the war. So she's just central to all of these discussions, to the very notion of what is the future of fashion going to be.
- [44:03]
Cassidy Zachary
One of my all time favorite images, period, hands down, by any photographer ever, has to be one of Lee's from this time period. And it's shot in the basement of a hair salon. And I'm sure both of you know it well. And there are two gentlemen on a Tandem bike pedaling. And what basically is happening is they are powering the hairdryers that are connected through these giant, like duct tubes that women are getting their hair dried in the floor above. How did she even find some of the things happening? They're truly incredible.
- [44:42]
Amber Butchart
Is absolutely amazing. And there were. There was a lack of coal, lack of electricity in Paris, like blackouts, and yet still these couture presentations happening. And I think it's that real sort of dichotomy there that just seems so shocking to the outside world.
- [45:02]
Cassidy Zachary
So despite the fact that she was covering fashion in Paris and also helping relaunch French Vogue, which, by the way, had been shut down by the Nazis.
- [45:10]
Amy Buhassein
Officially, de Brunhof had hidden the part of the machinery so that if they couldn't get hold of it and use it for their own means as well.
- [45:19]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, that's great. She comes back to England, Amy, and I think she continues to work a little bit with fashion here and there in those years that followed. But, Amber, you write in the book that she became disillusioned with fashion after the war. So, Amy, I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit more about that and what your grandmother's life looked like after World War II. And also, as promised earlier, I'd like to talk about the significance of Farley's House.
- [45:47]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, I think Amber's right. When you've witnessed life changing events and soldiers that you've been chatting with a few minutes before dead in a ditch next to you when you come back to England and they're expected to then continue to shoot fashion, it's a little bit futile. You can tell through her photographs that she's desperately trying to reach inside and find the energy and the imagination and the creativity that she had invested in it before the war, when there was more of a purpose during the war and before the war, when she had more purpose and she tries to make herself do it and Vogue are amazing, they really try to support her and help her, but she's got all these demons in her head, these things that you just can't. You can't forget those kind of pictures. And in the end she just found it too difficult. We have a theory at the archives that now that we know a bit more about ptsd, which is what she suffered from, we think she suffered from after the war, is that PTSD has triggers and they can be quite things that are unexpected. And we think that she possibly had some kind of trigger associated with taking fashion pictures or that kind of reportage that she was Doing because it becomes harder and harder for her to do. And they even sent her off to Sicily to do an amazing kind of fashion on holiday shoot in 1949. The pictures are technically really great, but they've not got that kind of the Lee Miller quirky bit of personality in them. They're a bit. They're a little bit flat. And, yeah, in the end, I think she learned to live with PTSD and depression by stopping doing it and hiding her stuff in the attic and by then completely reinventing herself as a gourmet cook for the last 15 years of her life, Spent every time someone would ask her about the war, she'd talk about cooking or tell them to talk to somebody else about it. And she died a celebrity cook in Britain. And it's great. It's a great way of not having to talk about it and triggering these memories. If you're talking about blue spaghetti and cauliflower breasts, it's interesting.
- [48:19]
Cassidy Zachary
This is just like a funny little, like, connection, because at one point, when Rudy Gernrick, the American designer, decided to retire, he launched a line of gourmet soups. So apparently this is something that folks in the fashion world decided to turn to is cooking.
- [48:36]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, well, I think. And Farley's was very much the basis of where she did this. This is here. I'm actually sitting in at Farley's at the moment here. She made her little herb garden that she put near the kitchen so she could just duck out quickly and get some fresh herbs. She had an orchard, she had a giant vegetable garden that she would get her parents to send her seeds over from America because she decided that English sweet corn was disgusting and only growing to feed horses on, and they needed American sweet corn. She would get into a lot of trouble for importing foreign seeds nowadays, but there was a lot of different things growing in the garden and she just loved it. And when you've lived through the war and witnessed people who have literally starved to death, being able to sit down with people who you genuinely care about and who've survived the same kind of ordeals and just share a meal, which, for her, she still had this amazing creativity and amazing kind of mind. So using rationing was still there as a restriction. So that made her have to flex her creativity even more. And using that to create a really lovely dish or slightly bonkers dish that she could then share with her friends or visitors was a really quite a cathartic thing.
- [50:00]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And friends and visitors to Farley's house. Oh, my. Because really, like, within her circle of very close friends are so many luminaries of modern art. Would you talk a little bit about that aspect of her life and her role within the Surrealist movement?
- [50:19]
Amy Buhassein
Gosh, I think my favorite of her friends is Dorothea Tanning because she is just one awesome lady. And she came here a lot and was super supportive to Leigh when she was trying to deal with her demons. But Max Ernst obviously came here a lot, too. Picasso came to stay and she cooked for him. And Picasso had she known since the late 30s when he'd painted her portrait more than six times. Leonora Carrington, she came here in the 60s with her sons. Gosh is basically the who's who of 20th century artists. Literary figures, set designers, paint any, you name it, they've probably been there. And not just surrealist artists also. There's a lot of early British pop artists that came here, too, like Bridget Riley, Terry Hamilton, people like that.
- [51:13]
Cassidy Zachary
And Farley's house also includes galleries and your grandmother's art collection.
- [51:19]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, my granddad Roland was a surrealist artist and a biographer of Tapia's man Ray Miro, Picasso. So they both had a quite a crazy art collection. In fact, when I was at school and they were teaching us about 20th century art, I knew to keep my mouth shut because sometimes we'd be looking at pictures and I'd be like, oh, that's a granddad's house. I mean, his very famous picture, A Weeping Woman that relates to Guernica, that's in the Tate Collection, used to be here. Wow. In the dining room. So it's that kind of caliber. They're not. Those ones aren't here anymore. But there's still quite an amazing collection and a lot of female artists as well, who in those days weren't properly recognized. I'm quite proud that they collected their work.
- [52:09]
Cassidy Zachary
And some of the images from the book are currently on view this summer at Farley's house and gallery in East Sussex. Where can our listeners learn a little bit more if they happen to be in the area this summer?
- [52:20]
Amy Buhassein
The house is very much kept as it was when Lee and Roland lived here. But the galleries, they have shows from the collections, and we also show work from contemporary artists as well. And you can find out more about it on Farley's website, which is farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk.
- [52:38]
Cassidy Zachary
And Amber, one last question for you. Lee was New York born. She was Paris trained, but she made her mark in London during this period of time, which was a very difficult period when British fashion was in flux that we've been talking about today. Do you have any parting thoughts on Lee's legacy to fashion photography from this era or moving forward to fashion photography?
- [53:02]
Amber Butchart
I think certainly that sort of utilitarian chic elements that she drew on, I think also the sort of. There is some comedy, some humor in her work as well, which I think sits quite well as a legacy within, like a British. A body of work created in Britain. Like the women wearing the fire masks and eye shields. This is one of the pictures in the book. They're wearing these things as protection from incendiary bombs. But it looks very much like a sort of modern art type surrealist, or even a slightly earlier, like sort of Bough house type facial furniture. Quite amazing. And you can see she's playing on that in the composition of the image as well. But also, I think more broadly in terms of legacy, of the particular messages that she was putting forward in Vogue. I think in some ways we're seeing a similar moment to that moment in the Second World War in terms of the current editorship. We have a British Vogue with Edward Dennfel, who is doing such fantastic stuff with Vogue in terms of addressing social issues and wider issues as well as fashion. And for me, those things completely just go hand in hand. And it's so nice to see so much of that folded back into Vogue as a publication. Just one example, last summer he put key workers on the covers during the pandemic on the covers of British Vogue. But it's something that's addressed in every issue. Social issues alongside fashion imagery. And so I think we're seeing a sort of moment that we haven't really seen in terms of British Vogue since the Second World War, in terms of that real marrying of fashion and social issues.
- [54:44]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And you can actually learn more. Go into this a little bit further in terms of Lee's relevance within this period of time. Because, Amy, you have your own podcast.
- [54:57]
Amy Buhassein
I muted. It's not just. It's not just me. I have different guests on each episode, including Amber. She's my first. She's the first guest. And they all address kind of different aspects around Lee's British fashion photography.
- [55:15]
Cassidy Zachary
And the title of the podcast is.
- [55:17]
Amy Buhassein
The same as the book, Handily Lee Fashion in Wartime Britain. And actually the book is going to be available very soon in America, so it's worth looking out for that. The podcast is available on Spotify and Acast, or you can find it on the Lee Miller archives, which is Lee miller.co.uk, website on the news page or the Farley's House and Gallery website on the events page.
- [55:42]
Cassidy Zachary
Ladies, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this incredible, amazing. I don't even know. Very rarely do I get speechless on the show. But what do you say about Leigh? She was something that we all aspire to be.
- [55:57]
Amber Butchart
I would agree with that, definitely. Thank you so much for having us. April.
- [56:01]
Amy Buhassein
Yeah, thank you for having us and it's been great meeting you.
- [56:05]
April Callahan
Amy, Amber, thank you so much for joining us for this glimpse into Lee Miller's work and world at this time. If this has left any of our listeners curious about the photographs and the book we have been discussing today, Lee Fashion and Wartime Britain, which was formerly only available in the uk. It is now available in the US Distributed by Chicago Books and we will put some additional reading racks for other biographies on Lee Miller in our show.
- [56:30]
Cassidy Zachary
Notes and if you are yearning to see some of Lee's work in person, boy are you in luck because the exhibition of her fashion photographs at Farley's House and Gallery runs through August 8th of 2021 and an exhibition of Miller's work also just opened at the Dolly Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The exhibition, which is called the Woman that Broke Boundaries, photographer Lee Miller, runs through January of 2022.
- [56:57]
April Callahan
Miller's work is also included among the 120 photographers featured in the not to be missed exhibition the New Woman behind the Camera which opened only a couple of days ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This runs through October 3, 2021 at the Met before it travels to the National Gallery of art in D.C. where it will be on view through January 30, 2022.
- [57:18]
Cassidy Zachary
And I think that does it for us us today dressed listeners. May you consider the picture you create each and every time you get dressed.
- [57:29]
April Callahan
Dressed will be back with season eight and all brand new episodes in February of next year.
- [57:34]
Cassidy Zachary
But until then, remember, we love hearing from you. So if you would like to write to us, you can do so@hellodressedhistory.com dressedhistory.com is also where of course you can register for our tour. So our trips, our new class, anything else that we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [57:52]
April Callahan
That includes April's twice weekly in person fashion history tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as our brand new dress, the School of Fashion Live online course the 1950s Golden Age Haute Couture which is now open for registration. And we do have gift cards available for both April's tours and the class. So just send us an email at hello@dressedhistory.com and also send us an email if you want to get on the first to know list for our New York City Day Tours coming your way in April 2025 and our Paris Fashion History Tours coming your way in June. Registration for both of these tours will open in January and we do expect them to sell out, so send us an email to get on those lists.
- [58:31]
Cassidy Zachary
Thank you as always for your continued support. Dressed will be coming back your way for Season 8 in early February. Dress the History of Fashion is a production of Dress Media.
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Amber Butchart
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