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Grace Mirabella
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Was he not afraid because he designed them so he knew what and how he was going to place them? I am here to say that he did other things and that we as part of the fashion crowd and at a certain point, part of the Donald Brooks crowd were in solid colors as well.
Be it black, pink, … linen, whatever, we were constant with him. His clothes weren't forced or rigid. They had a move that was instantly appealing - instantly made you feel good and look good. When a detail can be that a button is small and pleated; those little details were in his clothes. It was a super way of dressing.
He didn't really do bright colors. He did a coloring that was not pale or watery but it didn't shout at you. All you did was look at it and say, "You know what the best thing going in the market is right now? Donald Brooks!" That was in the mid 60's.
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| Gerald Blum |
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- and his favorite color was Chinese red. |
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June Weir
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Now we are looking at Donald's evening clothes. On the night of the opening of the show [Brooks retrospective], so many people went through the exhibit saying, "Gee, you know you really could wear this today."
Did he have a feeling for lace because there are several very special little lace dresses in the exhibit? He always treated it in a young way; it never looked old.
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| Jeanne Eddy |
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Yes, 99% of the clothes in this exhibit could be worn right now. |
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| Grace Mirabella |
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Maybe you are not fashion scholars, maybe you are. I am not so I have a little difficulty seeing things so particularly edited. Look at Donald in the mid 60's and look at the solid colors and pale prints that I'm telling you about.
The complete picture of Donald isn't here. This is a good part of it. Maybe it is two-thirds of it but for you to see his character, I wish you'd look a little further.
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| June Weir |
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I think the exhibit does a terrific job, Grace. It rounds out the combination of the slides and the actual clothing.
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Grace Mirabella
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When you look at the designer 'footprints' or plaques on the sidewalks of Seventh Avenue [Walk of Fame], you don't see Donald Brooks. Why is that? It's either bad scholarship, which it might be or is it that Donald came just before multi-media exposure?
He was in pages and pages of Vogue in the early to mid '60's. Those big time years are the ones I'm talking about and then they faded out. Somebody else was getting his attention like Otto Preminger, Neil Simon, Julie Andrews and other stage and screen notables.
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I remember that I used to think, "Why isn't he giving a little more time to his clothes? We miss them and want them in the magazine pages."
If he didn't do good clothes, I would not have cared. I'd look to somebody else but I did miss him because he played a role in American fashion at that moment which is not properly documented.
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June Weir
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The last group we chose to discuss were the colors that Donald used. Grace, here you'll see that he did use some bright colors. As a matter of fact, he used blocks of color in this example from 1970.
Here is one of his great coats using color in the lining, another, in an unusual combination of a day/evening look with feathers. Donald always had an interest in animal prints such as leopard and pony.
Is this the pale print, Grace, you were talking about? He did like Oriental feelings and the Chinese red was part of that story.
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