This is the story of how Marianne Dunat left her small village in the south of France, arrived in Hollywood in 1919 thinking she would stay for a year, and wound up carving out a magnificent career as a fashion designer at a time when costume design started taking off as a profession.
But Marianne Dunat’s Hollywood Deco Fashions of the 1920s, compiled by Dunat’s son Roland Bain, is more than just her story. It is a portfolio of the actual designs tracing the artist’s progression from simple anatomy parts to headdresses to day apparel to evening attire to movie costumes – eventually working on the set of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” and working side by side with the legendary Edith Head.
Bain explains that at the time of Dunat’s arrival in the United States, the motion picture industry was gaining much popularity because of its newness and glamour. He points out that stars such as Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow and Mary Pickford not only helped establish Hollywood’s fame but also helped create the costume design department. Prior to this, stars had to furnish their own costumes.
Dunat had the good fortune of having a wealthy travel companion, which allowed her to see the great fashions coming from trendsetting capitals like New York and Paris. While she may have had visions of jumping right into costume design, she soon learned that the process would be slow and measured. Her early education called for learning an incredible amount of detail regarding the female anatomy, as her first sketches attest.
Another important part of her early days was learning how to match hair color with complimenting colors of apparel. In fact, the book provides an extensive list of color harmonies – a fascinating section to anyone with even a passing interest in color and fashion.
Dunat eventually took the name of “Liane” as her fashion label. The beauty of this book is skimming through and studying her marvelous costumes and creativity, and getting a slice of nostalgia for the look of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Dunat’s story is an incredible one, and in her later years she often pondered what life would have been like if she didn’t adventure out of her small village. When she died in 1998 one month after her 100th birthday, the President of France sent a personal note of condolence to her family.
Writes Bain, “The extensive span of Ms. Dunat’s artistry is self-evident and should be of significant appreciation by a wide audience, particularly that segment of the populace having a bias for chic apparel that symbolizes Hollywood’s grandest epoch – the 1920s.”
