Textile Society of America
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Date of this Version
2024
Document Type
Presentation
Citation
Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium
Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event
Abstract
Several designers who made significant contributions to Paris fashions throughout the 1930s have disappeared from the record of fashion history. Among them was French milliner Henri Frank Hutchinson, alias Henri de Châtillon (1906-1972), who was celebrated for his innovative hats, accessories, and dresses. He fled his native France with the outbreak of World War II. He then settled in Mexico City in 1942, where he opened his millinery salon on Paseo de la Reforma, the capital’s broad boulevard. He was part of the numerous French émigrés (immigrants) who had found refuge in the United States and Latin America during wartime, including many intellectuals, artists, and fashion designers.
Throughout his career in Latin America, Henri de Châtillon supported Mexico’s local fashions and artisanal craftsmanship and cultivated the ambition to establish “an international style based on Mexican motifs” equivalent to Paris and New York fashions. He created hats integrating materials, shapes, and colors inspired by native Mexican aesthetics, such as the Zacate straw fibers and Chetumal palm fibers from the Yucatan. He also experimented with glazed corn tortillas when felt fabric became scarce. This paper will recover the course of Henri de Châtillon’s career and highlight the singularity of his creations and use of materials while restoring the place of forgotten designers such as him in fashion history.
Included in
Art and Materials Conservation Commons, Art Practice Commons, Fashion Design Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Museum Studies Commons
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Published by the Textiles Society of America
Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission