Editor’s Notice: Delving into the archives of popular culture historical past, “Remember When?” is a CNN Fashion sequence providing a nostalgic take a look at the superstar outfits that outlined their eras.
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In a person’s world, Katharine Hepburn typically wore the pants. The Hollywood main woman and trailblazer defiantly embraced menswear staples, amid unbelievable stress to not, paving the way in which for comfort-loving, power-dressing girls many years on.
Who may neglect the smooth velvet smoking jacket and pants she wore in “Lady of the Yr”? Or that slouchy two-piece she wore whereas perched atop an armchair, with wrinkled socks, scuffed Oxfords and a devil-may-care angle, within the pages of Life journal?
However following her personal type guidelines wasn’t at all times simple for Hepburn, a girl who can be later be revered as one of many biggest display screen legends of all time and admired for her gumption. Studio workers hid her slacks backstage to cease her sporting them (she reportedly selected to go pantless till they had been returned to her). Media shops revealed prolonged articles questioning the Hollywood girls who selected to put on males’s garments. “Trousers for ladies are unbelievable, ridiculous and absurd!” Movie Classic magazine quoted Hepburn’s fellow actress Constance Bennett saying of the pattern in 1933. “I can’t think about sporting such atrocities.”
The American public was additionally uncertain what to make of Hepburn strutting round in pants within the Thirties, earlier than the practicalities of World Battle II would make them extra commonplace amongst girls. “Hepburn’s on- and offscreen selections left many critics and far of the general public suspicious, even hostile,” wrote Hollywood historian William J. Mann in his 2006 biography of the star “Kate: The Lady Who Was Hepburn.”
In 1934, Hepburn fled to Paris together with her pal Susan Steell. As Mann tells it, critics on the time had been ripping aside her newest movie “Spitfire” and her Broadway efficiency in “The Lake.” Individuals additionally felt alienated by her “eccentric method to gender, sexuality, and stardom,” he wrote.
Earlier than that pivotal journey, Hepburn would costume in previous garments, put on no make-up and refuse to let publicists hyperlink her romantically with males (she lived with a girl, fueling rumors she was lesbian). She even spoke out about politics, supporting Upton Sinclair, a socialist Democratic nominee within the 1934 California governor’s race, and going through accusations of holding communist beliefs. “Then there have been her films — edgy and offbeat, glimpses of an alternate world the place single girls held the higher hand,” continued Mann.
Take the 1933 romantic drama “Christopher Robust,” through which Hepburn’s pants-wearing character, aviator Woman Cynthia Darrington, has an affair with a married man. The movie’s message appeared to resign the concept of marriage solely, with the uncared for spouse of Darrington’s lover (performed by actress Billie Burke) saying: “Marriage and kids make virtually any lady old school and illiberal.”
“What’s fascinating,” Mann wrote of Hepburn, “is that this determine, reviled as subversive in so some ways, might be reworked — because the years handed — right into a nationwide heroine.” She would go on to win 4 Finest Actress Oscars for “Morning Glory” in 1933, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in 1967, “The Lion in Winter” in 1968, and “On Golden Pond” in 1981, fastidiously crafting a persona alongside the way in which.
She turned herself into “an emblem of true-blue, red-blooded Americana as a result of she needed to if she was to outlive and prosper,” wrote Mann.
Hepburn’s type was a part of that story.
Certainly one of her biggest allies in crafting a brand new public picture was Gilbert Adrian, chief costume designer at MGM from 1924 to 1941, who put Hepburn in that iconic goddess robe in “The Philadelphia Story” that has since impressed related appears to be like for the likes of Jane Fonda, Halle Berry and Cate Blanchett.
Adrian can also be the person who — seeing how forward of the instances Hepburn was — backed her private type and desire for pants by translating it onto the silver display screen. A girl in menswear was nonetheless a uncommon incidence, regardless of stars like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich additionally blazing the way in which, in response to vogue historian Kimberly Truhler.
“It’s not an excessive amount of of an overstatement to say that ‘The Philadelphia Story’ is revolutionary in its costume design,” Truhler wrote on her vogue historical past weblog GlamAmor in 2014. “It options not one, however two examples of menswear… three in case you embrace her equestrian ensemble as properly. All of those outfits primarily open the film, too, which was unprecedented… (Hepburn’s) need to put on pants, notably within the opening scene of this movie, was objected to by each producer Joseph Mankiewicz and Louis B. Mayer. However her association with MGM allowed an amazing quantity of management, and he or she actually confirmed them who wore the pants of their relationship.”
That velvet smoking jacket? That was additionally Adrian. Truhler stated it could later affect the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, whose Fall-Winter 1966 assortment launched the enduring girls’ tuxedo that he would proceed together with in all his collections till 2002.
Hepburn’s pant-led outfits have remained within the annals of favor, making her pairing of blue denims or high-waisted slacks with button-down shirts a quintessential “American look.” And if the ubiquity of trousers right now is something to go by, her legacy stretches far past the silver display screen.