Pulp Fashion in San Francisco

The Legion of Honor in San Francisco is currently hosting Pulp Fashion, the exhibit of historic costumes and jewelery, all fashioned out of paper, and I was really looking forward to seeing it.   It was a beautiful sunny day when I headed up the penninsula with my friends and we lucked out with equally great weather in San Francisco.  Here are Diana and Barbara in front of the Legion of Honor:

                                                                                

  And here is a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from there:

                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                               

                                                                                  


The Belgian artist, Isabelle de Borchgrave, is a painter by training but has long been interested in creating  elaborate historical costumes from simple rag paper.  Working with leading costume historians, and inspired by the Renaissance finery of the Medici family, Elizabeth I, and Marie Antoinette, as well as Coco Chanel and others, she has crafted a "world of splendor from the simplest rag paper" as described on the Pulp Fashion website for The Legion of Honor exhibit.

Here's a picture I took of one of the costumes before I found out that they did not allow photography in the exhibit!  :>(

                                                                              


As we made our way around the exhibit, each costume really looked like it was made of fabric; you had to look closely to see that it was paper.

Of course we had to head off to the gift shop after that and I took some pictures of the costumes from posters and books there:

                                                                        

                                                                              
                                                                                
This is a Worth design stenciled on paper:

The lace on the costumes was made from lens cleaning paper with stenciled designs:

I had to keep reminding  myself that this was all done in paper, including the jewelry:

  
For anyone who has the time or interest, I would highly recommend taking a trip to The Legion of Honor to see this exhibit.  It will be there until June 12th.

Then it was off to lunch at Sutro's at the Cliff House where we had a great table overlooking the water:

For anyone who has had to stop and buy a sweatshirt from the vendors on Fisherman's Wharf on a cold damp day in San Francisco, you can appreciate this sunny weather:

It was a great day!