Week 2 Blog Post- Bonnie Cashin

The relationship between recorded events and historical stories has been extensively studied. Hayden White presents an interesting standpoint of what this relationship actually is. He begins by defining events. From all the things that happen throughout history, an event is defined by what the narrator seems to be significant and chooses to remember. Events only become history with the presence of narrative, which is formed by the stringing events together. These events are strung together through the notion of cause and effect. In other words, narrative is created given the notion of what is important to us and how the world works. One event causes another effect, which causes another event, and so on. Because we need to have some idea of how the world works to use this cause and effect, we have to lean on our notion of how the world works to connect facts together.

This concept can be applied to all historical events and narratives. I chose to discuss the Bonnie Cashin collection of fashion, theatre, and film costume design (1913-2000). The finding aid for this collection describes and details the organization and contents of this collection and helps establish a historical context for this collection. This specific collection includes Cashin’s design illustrations, writings on design, contractual paperwork, photographs of her designs, press materials, and personal photos and letters.

If I were to write a historical narrative based on materials in this collection, I would begin with a story of the biography of Bonnie Cashin. Bonnie Cashin was born in Fresno, CA in 1908. She was interested in fashion and costumes beginning in her teen years. She briefly studied drawing in Los Angeles. Bonnie then moved to New York in 1933 to design costumes for the Roxyette dance-line, while also studying drawing in New York. She then quit both these jobs and began designing film costumes for Fox. Cashin eventually left Fox and began designing clothes and accessories for a popular clothing brand. She eventually gained public fame during this time through her efficient use of technology within the fashion industry and was considered a pioneer of sportswear. She then began working with another clothing brand until the launch of the Coach handbag company. She designed for Coach for 13 years and her designs are currently still in production. After her Coach years, she continued designing for other companies, and created another company of her own, The Knittery. She didn’t have any design assistants and received numerous awards for her work. She also founded a non-profit organization to provide funding for design prototypes.

The materials present in the archival collection reflect this biography. The collection is organized chronologically and includes design sketches from all the companies she worked for, as well as some of her personal items. For example, the collection begins with early costumes, then dance- wear costumes, then film costumes, etc.

Based on this information, I could create a narrative of the professional life of Bonnie Cashin. I could speculate that the time period she was designing for had no other influential sportswear designers and had little access to technology. Perhaps her sportswear was so influential because she lived during the post- war era, following World War II. Her designs may have appealed and catered to the women of this era through the practicality and comfort of sportswear. I could describe Cashin’s legacy as one of the most influential designers in history because her designs strongly influence and are present in mainstream fashion today.

Based on the information in the finding aid, I could also describe Cashin herself. First, she seemed to get bored of companies easily and enjoyed changing directions in her career. This is obvious because she had a multitude of employers. She also seemed to have a variety of interests from basic drawing, to sportswear, to clothing, to accessories. She was also very technology oriented, which shows that she was future- driven and attempted to change the way things were done. Finally, she was generous and sought to help future designers through her non-profit organization.

My narrative would have a few pieces missing if it were based entirely on this collection. First, it is unclear what kind of drawing Bonnie studied at art school. Perhaps Bonnie may have wanted to be a different kind of artist at one point in her life, but something pushed her into fashion specifically. Exactly what pushed her into fashion over other types of drawing is not included in this finding aid and would be missing from my narrative. I might remedy this by offering my own opinions of why she pursued fashion, or finding other resources to examine.

Next, something missing from my narrative is why Cashin left her job designing dance wear and began working at Fox. Something must have spurred her to leave dance- wear and begin creating film costumes. Because narrative is based so strongly on cause and effect, as White explained, my narrative would be incomplete without knowing the cause which effected her to begin designing at Fox. Furthermore, it is unclear why she then chose to leave Fox and began designing ready to wear clothes for other companies. I also don’t know why she stopped designing for her own first company, Coach, and went back to designing for other companies. This seems strange because she went from being the Creative Head of her Coach to designing for other people again.

Next, it is unclear what kind of technology she used within fashion. I would do more research on technology within fashion to accurately portray her narrative.

Finally, within the arrangement of documents of the collection, I noticed something called “Ford Foundation trip to India.” This trip was not included in the biography of the finding aid and it would be missing from my narrative because there is no context or information about it.