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Untitled Fashion Design, 1919
Price on Request
Details
Medium: gouache on card
Year: 1919
Sheet size: 9.75 x 6.25"
Image size: 6.5 x 2.75"
Framed size: 18 x 14.5"
Signature: signed 'Erté' lower center, stamped on verso
Year: 1919
Sheet size: 9.75 x 6.25"
Image size: 6.5 x 2.75"
Framed size: 18 x 14.5"
Signature: signed 'Erté' lower center, stamped on verso
About the Work
Likely a dress design for Henri Bendel or B. Altman, "Untitled Fashion Design" from 1919 is a gouache on card, iconic early Erté design. Erté's stylized Villa Excelsior name stamp and the 'Composition originale' stamp are verso and the artwork is signed by the artist on the front, lower right. The image size is 6.5 x 2.75" and the painting is framed in a custom, closed-corner, Art Deco style frame. The artwork ships framed.
Erté’s "Untitled Fashion Design, 1919" is a refined early gouache that reflects the artist’s emerging Art Deco fashion vocabulary at a particularly important moment. Executed in gouache on card and signed within the composition, the work presents a poised female figure in a sharply controlled ensemble of black, brown, and green, animated by the striking accent of her cropped red hair.
Likely created within the world of Erté’s early fashion design work, possibly for a luxury retail or couture context such as Henri Bendel or B. Altman, the gouache demonstrates how fashion illustration could function as more than a record of clothing. Erté turns the garment into a complete visual statement: elegant, modern, and quietly theatrical. The design is not overloaded with ornament; instead, its sophistication comes from proportion, silhouette, and restraint.
The figure stands with a narrow, elongated poise that anticipates the sleek visual language of the 1920s. A black high-necked garment forms the upper body, while a brown wrap falls across the figure in broad, angular planes. Fine vertical lines suggest pleating or structured fabric, and the green edging gives the costume a subtle but effective decorative lift. The black underdress and pointed heels introduce a note of modern urban elegance, while the pale face and red hair provide a crisp focal point.
What makes the work compelling is its balance between drapery and geometry. The wrap has movement, but it is carefully controlled; the figure appears both fashionable and architectural. This is Erté’s strength as a designer: he does not simply illustrate a dress, but organizes fabric, body, color, and gesture into a single stylized image.
The 1919 date gives the gouache particular interest. It belongs to the immediate postwar period, just before the full flowering of Art Deco style, and captures the transition from earlier modes of elegance toward the leaner, more graphic sophistication of the new decade. The work is understated compared with some of Erté’s more theatrical costume designs, but that restraint is part of its appeal. It shows his fashion language in a clean, concentrated form.
The verso documentation further supports the work’s standing as an original design sheet. The Erté block stamp and “composition originale” stamp provide studio context and reinforce its identity as a hand-painted original rather than a later interpretation.
Within Erté’s original gouache market, this work should be understood as an early, elegant fashion design rather than a famous-image composition. Its appeal rests on its date, purity of design, studio documentation, and sophisticated handling of costume as modern visual form. More than a century after its creation, it remains a graceful example of Erté’s ability to transform fashion into a language of poise, structure, and refined glamour.
About the Artist
Untitled Fashion Design, 1919
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$38,850.00
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