2. Kitchen Vest, 1977
The kitchen vest was created by American
artist, Joan Steiner. It is created out of velvet,
cotton, rayon, satin and found objects.
‘Based on the kitchen in Steiner’s family home,
this vest nostalgically evokes an American post-
war suburban kitchen, with its gleaming
appliances, rug-strewn linoleum floor, and lace-
trimmed curtains. The vest literally puts a woman
in the kitchen, but it is one that the wearer can
take with her out into the world.’
I found this waistcoat in a book and thought
about how feminism shows a role of gaining
rights for women. This jacket made me think
about feminism as it is based on old fashioned
and sexist ideas of how women belong ‘in the
kitchen’.
3. The method used on this waistcoat is to show a woman’s ‘role’ on the outside, making
the wearer state her purpose.
However, the fact that it is a waistcoat shows a more masculine presence, suggesting
that women are more dominate and in power when they are in the kitchen: an approach
to saying that the kitchen is their territory.
The vest is made up of found objects, suggesting how the women had to make do with
whatever they can find after the war, when there wasn’t much money.
Also the material used for the vest reflects how women are delicate and like ‘pretty and
soft’ things; it is created out of velvet, cotton and satin. However, it is typical to have a
waistcoat to be created out these materials.
4. Feminism
‘Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at
defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic,
and social rights for women.’
The first-wave of feminism was during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century in the UK and
US. Soon after the Suffragettes were part of the
suffrage movement, in order to get women to be
allowed to vote.
The Suffragettes went to extreme measures to winning rights for
women, and it included hunger strikes and being imprisoned.
In 1908, the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) adopted
a colour scheme of three colours which symbolised the women:
purple for dignity, white for purity, and green for hope.
These colours were used for banners, flags, rosettes and badges;
a method to show their role to win their rights.
5. Pendants were created for the two
leading Suffragettes: Emmeline
Pankhurst and Louise Eates.
This pendant here was commissioned
to Louise Eates in 1909.
The jewellery included the colours
representing the movement (purple,
green and white) by using stones, such
as amethysts, pearls and peridots.
These stones however were common in
women’s jewellery at the time, so
wasn’t connected to the Suffragettes at
first.
There is a myth however, that the
colours chosen have another meaning:
Green, White and Violet = GWV = Give
Women Votes.
6. Women carried on fighting for rights after the suffragettes, and is still
fighting now. However, if I was to carry on looking at feminism, my
strongest inspiration would be from where it began, as the women had
very little respect and fought for years no matter what the consequences
were.
I am also very intrigued by the colour
scheme and how they used it in fashion to
portray there role and personality to
wanting a say.
Mrs Pethick-Lawrence wrote
that “the colours enable us to
make that appeal to the eye
which is so irresistible. The
result of our proc-essions is that
this movement becomes
identified in the mind of the
onlooker with colour, gay
sound, movement and beauty.”
