‘Modernist Madonnas’: Dorothy Todd, Madge Garland and Virginia Woolf
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09612020701445867
ISSN1747-583X
Autores Tópico(s)Art, Politics, and Modernism
ResumoAbstract During the 1920s Vogue magazine in the UK was transformed from a society paper into a magazine of high modernism and the avant‐garde. The editor was Dorothy Todd. Todd was assisted by her protégée and lover, the Australian‐born Madge Garland. During this period Garland and Todd developed friendships with Virginia Woolf, other members of Bloomsbury, writers such as Rebecca West and artists such as Marie Laurencin. Madge Garland also developed friendships with artists, couturiers and intellectuals in both Paris and London. Dorothy Todd was sacked from Vogue in 1926 because of what was perceived by Conde Nast as its rather too bohemian direction. Todd’s career never recovered from this blow. Garland, however, went on to become a leading fashion journalist, businesswoman and textile expert. In 1947 she was appointed to the Royal College of Art, London, as the first Professor of Fashion Design. In the last stage of her career Garland wrote a number of books about art, fashion history and gardening. This article considers the lives and achievements of Dorothy Todd and Marjorie Garland, and their involvement with Virginia Woolf as her fashion advisors, editors and acquaintances. The article also examines the way in which Vogue celebrated the work of non‐Bloomsbury members and explores Marjorie Garland’s major contribution to fashion journalism, history and teaching in the UK. Notes [1] Frederick Ashton is quoted by J. Kavanagh (1996) Secret Muses: the life of Frederick Ashton (London: Faber), p. 74. [2] Kavanagh, Secret Muses, quotes Huxley, p. 74. [3] Cecil Beaton quoted by N. Luckhurst (1998) Bloomsbury in Vogue (London: Cecil Woolf Publishers), p. 3. [4] Ibid., p. 74. [5] D. K.S. Hyland & H. McPherson (1989) Marie Laurencin: artist and muse (Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Museum of Art), p. 13. [6] M. Garland (1963) The World of Marie Laurencin, in J. Hadfield (Ed.) The Saturday Book (London: Hutchinson), p. 46. [7] This research draws on a study of British Vogue 1922–26, held at the British Library, Colindale. [8] R. Arnold (2004) Garland, Madge (1898–1990), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press). http://www.oxforddnb.com (accessed 28 October 2004). [9] Obituary, ‘Madge Garland’, The Times, 18 July 1990, p. 14. [10] Luckhurst, Bloomsbury in Vogue, p. 3. [11] C. Seebohm (1982) The Man Who Was Vogue (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 125. Luckhurst also states (Bloomsbury in Vogue, p. 19) that the magazine was already in financial difficulty when Todd took on the job as editor in 1922. [12] Ibid., p. 4. [13] R. West (1972) Untitled, in J. Russell Noble (Ed.) Recollections of Virginia Woolf (London: Peter Owen), p. 90. [14] P. Quennell (1976) The Marble Foot: an autobiography 1905–1938 (London: Collins), p. 148. [15] Kavanagh, Secret Muses, p. 73. [16] Ibid. [17] Ibid. [18] Ibid., p. 77. [19] Ibid., p. 75. [20] In a diary entry on 31 May 1928 Woolf describes Todd’s room as ‘rather to her credit, workmanlike; Garland pearl hung and silken; Todd as buxom as a badger … the whole atmosphere professional; no charm, except the rather excessive charm of Garland.’ In A. Olivier Bell (Ed.) (1980) The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. III (London: Hogarth Press), p. 184. [21] V. Woolf wrote to Vanessa on 31 May 1928, in N. Nicolson (Ed.) (1977) A Change of Perspective: letters of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press), p. 501. [22] Garland, in Noble, Recollections of Virginia Woolf, p. 172. [23] Virginia Woolf on 6 May 1926, in Bell, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. III, p. 78. [24] Ibid., 30 June 1926, p. 91. [25] Quoted by H. Lee (1999) Virginia Woolf (New York: Vintage Books), p. 508. [26] Garland, in Noble, Recollections of Virginia Woolf, p. 171. [27] R. West, in Noble, Recollections of Virginia Woolf, p. 90. [28] Bell, Diary of Virginia Woolf, 27 April 1925, p. 12, 14 May 1925, p. 21. [29] Bell, Diary of Virginia Woolf, 27 April 1925, p. 12; Sybil is, I believe, a reference to Lady Colefax. [30] L. Cohen (1999) ‘Frock Consciousness’: Virginia Woolf, the open secret, and the language of fashion, Fashion Theory, 3(2), pp. 149–174 (p. 150). [31] Woolf, in Nicolson, A Change of Perspective, p. 251. [32] M. Garland, in Noble, Recollections of Virginia Woolf, p. 173. [33] Ibid. [34] Vogue, late May 1924, p. 49. [35] J. Garrity (2000) Virginia Woolf, Intellectual Harlotry, and 1920’s British Vogue, in Pamela Caughie (Ed.) Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (New York: Garland), p. 193. [36] Vogue, late January 1925, p. 40. [37] According to Garland, Laurencin’s influence on interior decoration was noticeable in the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs of 1925; Garland, ‘The World of Marie Laurencin’, p. 47. [38] Vogue, late January 1925, p. 40. [39] R. Brettell (1999) Monet to Moore Exhibition Catalogue (New Haven: Yale University Press), p.72. [40] Quoted by B. Elliott & J. Wallace (1994) Women Artists and Writers: modernist impositionings (London: Routledge), p. 113. [41] Luckhurst, Bloomsbury in Vogue, p. 21. [42] J. Garrity (1999) Selling Culture to the ‘Civilized’: Bloomsbury, British Vogue, and the marketing of national identity, Modernism/Modernity, 6(2), pp. 29–58. [43] Garrity, in Caughie, Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, p. 186. [44] Bell, Diary of Virginia Woolf, p. 89. [45] Woolf, in Nicholson, A Change of Perspective, p. 270. [46] Woolf, quoted by H. Lee (1999) Virginia Woolf (New York: Vintage Books), p. 13. As Woolf’s biographer, Hermione Lee, states, ‘the inhibitions and censorships of women’s life‐writing is one of her most urgent subjects’. [47] Ibid. [48] Ibid., p. 549. [49] Ibid., p. 550. [50] Ibid., pp.557, 516. [51] V. Woolf (1939) Reviewing (London: Hogarth Press), p. 23. [52] Luckhurst, Bloomsbury in Vogue, p. 5. [53] Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 489. [54] Woolf, in Nicolson, A Change of Perspective, p. 270. [55] Ibid., Letter to V. Sackville‐West, 29 March 1926, p. 250. [56] Ibid., p. 158. [57] Ibid. [58] Ibid., p. 200. [59] Seebohm, The Man Who Was Vogue, pp. 127–128. [60] Woolf, in Nicolson, A Change of Perspective, p. 295. [61] Cohen, ‘Frock Consciousness’, p. 167. [62] Seebohm, The Man Who Was Vogue, p. 125. [63] Woolf, in Nicolson, A Change of Perspective, p. 460. [64] Ibid., p. 463. [65] Ibid., p. 478 [66] In a conversation I had with Cecil Woolf in September 2004 he indicated that he thought Todd became an alcoholic. [67] Quoted in Elliott & Wallace, Women Artists and Writers, pp. 113–114. [68] Ibid. [69] Ibid. [70] Garland, ‘The World of Marie Laurencin’, p. 46. [71] Ibid., p. 47. [72] Ibid. [73] Luckhurst states that the interim editor who took over after Todd, Harry Yoxall, maintains that Garland was dismissed, p. 20. [74] Arnold, Oxford DNB. http://www.oxforddnb.com ([accessed 28 October 2004). [75] J. Ironside (1973) Janey: an autobiography (London: Michael Joseph), p. 59. [76] M. Garland (1951) The Anatomy of Design: a series of inaugural lectures by professors of the Royal College of Art (London: Royal College of Art), p. 81. [77] Ibid., p. 83. [78] Ibid., p. 86. [79] Ironside, Janey, p. 61. [80] Ibid., p. 62. [81] Ibid. [82] Ibid., p. 63. [83] Ibid. [84] M. Garland (1968) The Indecisive Decade (London: Macdonald), p. 234. [85] V. Glendinning (1987) Rebecca West: a life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 136. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAnne Pender Dr Anne Pender lectures in English and Theatre. She has published a book, Christina Stead: satirist (Common Ground Publishing, 2002), and is now working on a book on Barry Humphries.
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