Fano Messan, a name to conjure with. She was the muse of the season for Emilia Wickstead, who volunteered that “she was a sculptor…. She was an artist. She was an actress. She was very much in the 1920s scene in France,” hanging out with Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Kees van Dongen and Man Ray. “If you look at 1920s shots of her,” with her scissored Eton Crop, and boyish looks, “I think it's really interesting,” continued Wickstead, “because it’s very much how a lot of women still feel today.” Born in Tarbes, France, in 1902, Messan sprung to fame early on. “The Latin Quarter has fun trying to determine the sex of Fano Messan,” wrote Lorimer Hammond of The Chicago Tribune in 1924, when she was invited to show her sculptures in Chicago. The following year, she showed at the Grand Palais in Paris at the Salon d’Automne. “In the 1920s she had to dress as a man and pretend to be a man to go to school and to study sculpture," said Wickstead, adding, “I’m very much drawn to this sort of masculine-feminine look.”
That androgynous look was captured early on in Wickstead’s intimate show in her salon on Sloane Street, with a mannish artist’s shirt in a 1920s beige and black checkerboard crepe de chine, worn loosely (without cufflinks) over a donkey brown collared sweater, and beige and brown checked wool wide legged and deep cuffed pants, and plain black men’s shoes from Manolo Blahnik. The hair was pulled back, off the face and twisted and crimped into a curl or two by Sam McKnight.
There was a broad-shouldered black smoking with a wing collared white crepe shirt worn negligently with it. And then a big shouldered late ’30s-inspired coat in a black and white check wool, with a car wash hem, worn over a longer crepe skirt, that was given a similar treatment. In movement the twin skirts had a playful effect, worn over a denim top, with the neckline of the checkerboard skirted dress just seen beneath it.
“I’m obsessed with these 1920s suits and shapes, and the way that the dresses draped,” said Wickstead. So there were plenty of artfully draped necklines to the dresses—one hourglass, full skirted dress had a high in front, low in back effect. It was shown in a sleeveless black and white tweed, with pockets edged in fringing, worn over a denim shirt. Then again, it was shown sleeveless in a silvery cloque, with dozens of little pleats to form the great volume of the ¾ length skirt, for the ultimate evening look.
The finale was a staples white dress worn just above the ankle, and painted in black—although it carried with it a long, long, long train in a sort of sludge-colored hand-painted effect. In 1929, Luis Buñuel’s film Un Chien Andalou, was released. His friend Salvador Dalí had written the surrealist short film. Fano Messan played a boyish young woman, who dies too soon, run over by a car. Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard and Le Corbusier, as well as all the members of André Breton’s Surrealist group had all gathered for the opening. Of course Wickstead took inspiration from Fano’s startlingly contemporary look in the movie, which she has also found in, say a 1990s shot of Linda Evangelista, her hair scissored short, and her endless neck going on for days. There was a glittering gold dress, with feathery golden pieces which gilded the dress from the hips to the ¾ length hem—only shown with a black sock and earnest flat shoe. A spirit of artful negligence, wouldn’t you say?
