among other publications. She is an instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, in the Fashion and Textile Studies MA program.
Matheson applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Artisans and Designers: American Fashion Through Elizabeth and William Phelps, and shared the following:
Page 99 of Artisans and Designers: American Fashion Through Elizabeth and William Phelps is part of a discussion of Phelps Associates’ 1944 American Fashion Critics’ (Coty) Award win, and their contribution to the fashion show during the awards ceremony.Learn more about Artisans and Designers at the The Kent State University Press website.
About three-fourths of the page is Figure 4.3, a page from the Coty Awards program, with my caption and the image credits to the Coty Archives and the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Special Collections and College Archives (SPARC). The awards program shows photographs of the Coty Award statue by Malvina Hoffman, as well as photos and bios of the award winners: “Claire McCardell, Casual Clothes Designer,” “Sally Victor, Millinery Designer,” and “Phelps Associates, Accessory Designers.” At the bottom of the program, there is text explaining the award criteria, “These Awards are made to the most outstanding American fashion designers who, in the opinion of the Jury, have best interpreted the fashion trend in 1943, under the restrictive influences of war-time economy.”
At the top of page 99 there are two partial paragraphs of my own text about the types of bags that Phelps Associates showed at the Coty Awards, including a bag “of worsted surcingle webbing with llama hide gussets,” with my observation that this combined a woolen textile used in horse harness with leather not in demand for military use. The second paragraph begins a discussion of how the Coty Awards publicized Phelps Associates’ production of leather shoulder bags that met the WWII-era women’s uniform specifications for branches of the US military, including WACs, WAVEs, SPARs, and Marines.
Between my text, and the text and images of the Coty Awards program that is reproduced on page 99, readers are introduced to several important themes in the Phelpses’ work and in Artisans and Designers. Firstly, the working partnership between Elizabeth and William Phelps is evident in their joint award, photo, bio, and even the name of the business. This page also highlights the Phelpses’ work in leather shoulder bags inspired by historical military forms and the hands-free freedom these bags give their wearers. Another theme is the way that Phelps Associates reused vintage metalwork in their pieces—a concept that was an innovative way to handle wartime scarcity, but also resonates with today’s interest in sustainability. Readers will also learn about the influence of hand-worked horse harness on the Phelpses’ work, and the related theme of the Phelpses’ interest in hand craft traditions from both the US and Europe. Finally, the page emphasizes that William and Elizabeth Phelps designed from the perspective of being makers themselves, and that they personally worked out the initial design samples for their accessories.
However, 1944 is only at the beginning of William and Elizabeth Phelps’s years in American fashion. Reading page 99 alone, the reader would not know about later developments in their careers, from workshop moves (New York to Pennsylvania to North Carolina) to the introduction of sportswear in the post-war period.
In terms of my methods, what the reader can see from this page is research using archival materials such as ephemera, but readers would miss out on the object-based research that is also key to the book. Each chapter of Artisans and Designers is anchored by an introductory object or objects—extant garments or accessories that I have studied in person, each object telling more of the story of Phelps Associates and their clients.
--Marshal Zeringue