Austria
Because the applied arts and avant-garde thrived in Vienna, Austria was exposed to a variety of ideas and examples of Artistic Dress. In 1900 Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh participated in the eighth Vienna Secession exhibit. We know that Margaret’s clothing excited attention from a newspaper article that noted “a young lady with reddish hair, dressed elegantly in an unusual manner, attracted general attention.” In 1901, Henry van de Velde delivered a lecture on Artistic Dress in Vienna (his wife had intended on accompanying him as an exemplar of Artistic Dress adoption, but ill-health prevented her). It was only after this initial contact with foreign Artistic Dress that we find Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Alfred Roller, and their compatriots designing clothing.
Despite the foreign roots, Viennese Artistic Dress, much like Viennese applied arts, featured a very identifiable style, characterized by angular geometry and use of pattern. This is perhaps most identifiable in the work of Koloman Moser, whose work earned him the nickname “little square”. Two garments presumed to be by Koloman Moser (seen in the photographs of his wife Ditha Moser and Emilie Floege) feature the same dark and light squares with which he decorated several interiors, including the woman’s dressing room featured in a 1907 Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. Less obvious, but present nevertheless, is the linear pattern he added to the neckline of the 1905 Dress he designed for Ditha. Repeated geometric pattern can also be seen in the triangular pattern on the yoke of a dress designed by Klimt (executed and worn by Floege), the diamonds down the front of Hoffmann’s 1901 drawing by Hoffmann, and the squares on his 1910 dress.
No doubt the vitality of the Weiner Kunstgewerbeschule and the Wiener Werkstatte, both of which welcomes female students, played an important roll in Viennese Artistic Dress. We know that many of the Austrian women who adopted Artistic Dress were alumni of these institutions. Among them were Mileva Roller and Ditha Moser. Furthermore, the Wiener Werkstatte opened a fashion department in 1913, several years after students and staff began designing and wearing Artistic Dress.