Weekend Review: Young Originals

Young Originals / Rebecca Jumper Matheson
Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech UP, c2015.
240 p.

This is a book about style, but in a very particular way -- it's all about the creation of a "teen" fashion category, created by American designer Emily Wilkens. 

In the early 40s, Wilkens arose from a career in fashion illustration and designing for children, to become a breakout success in the new area of teenage upscale ready to wear. She started out designing some stage costumes for a play in which the character laments being in between 'children' and 'junior miss' sizes for her clothing - Wilkens realized that this was a real life problem as well and set out to bridge that gap. 

She was very successful, both at designing and at connecting her business to opportunities like boutiques in department stores and lots of promotion. She was very active in the 40s and 50s, but kept working into the 80s, although later on she was more of a health/spa influencer, as I suppose we'd call it now. Her approach was focused on youth and health as the appeal of her clothing and of teens in general. Her aesthetic was the sporty, lean American look, throughout her career. Some of her prescriptive statements in an book aimed at teens that she wrote in the 60s doesn't sit well these days - she says, for example,  ‘All men admire a slender beautiful figure, and there’s no one thing that spoils a girl’s looks, fun and popularity as much as excess weight’. 

This book is really fascinating, however, as a study of a designer that is almost unknown today. It's comprehensive and includes many black and white images as well as a centre insert of some colour images. The author bases her research both in archives (press clippings, designs, etc) as well as on extant Wilkens pieces in various museum collections. The concept of teen fashion is well explored and there was quite a bit of fun information here that was new to me. While this is an academic book, it's written in an engaging manner for the interested reader. I'm glad I found it thanks to my library!