Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Described by photography historian John Wood as “the rarest, the most fragile and, to a great many eyes, the most beautiful of photographic processes”, autochrome was a turning point. The Lumière brothers introduced autochrome in 1907. It was the first commercially available photographic process capable of capturing colour in a single exposure using a standard camera. It arrived at a crucial time of change in geopolitics, rapid technological advances and feverish activity in the arts. It also recorded a paradigm shift in fashion, from the fussy ornamentation of the 19th century to the more streamlined interwar era, revealing clothes as they were worn — in colour.Autochrome pictures that survive today are as rare as they are beautiful. The glass plates on to which the images were exposed were highly susceptible to damage: only a fraction of the estimated 20mn autochromes thought to have been manufactured between 1907 and the early 1930s at the Lumière factory in Lyon still exist, having languished unseen in dark archives for decades. Or, as with the hundreds taken by Lionel de Rothschild (1882-1942), packed away in a cupboard and forgotten, until relatively recently. Today, thanks to digital technology, thousands of autochrome images can be safely viewed online. My book, The Colour of Clothes: Fashion and Dress in Autochromes 1907-1930, features roughly 370 images, most of them autochromes and many of which have not been published before. By aiming to showcase early 20th-century fashion for the first time through the lens of the autochrome, I hope to highlight the extraordinary variety of colour, pattern and texture of clothes, and the people who wore them, as they were seen in life.Cinema pioneers Louis and Auguste Lumière were already successful monochrome plate manufacturers when they devised an innovative method to bring colour photography to the consumer market. Their solution, which was built on research by other scientists, was to filter light on to a glass plate inside the camera through a mosaic screen coated with minuscule potato starch granules dyed red, green and blue. The resulting colour positive image exposed on the plate was designed to be projected or viewed against daylight.After a sensational launch at the Photo-Club de Paris, the autochrome was taken up by Pictorialist photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Their goal was to elevate photography from Fox Talbot’s “Pencil of Nature” to the “paintbrush” of nature — on a par with fine art. Their interest in the autochrome did not last long because its image was fixed and unchangeable, like a Polaroid. But when it comes to documenting the history of fashion, the autochrome’s permanence is invaluable. Unlike hand-tinted monochrome photos, early colour printing or artistic interpretations, it provides reliable evidence of colour at a time when accuracy was often compromised.Through autochrome’s lens we see clothes in vivid, luminous colour and forensic textural detail, from Paris couture, fancy dress, national costume and indigenous dressing, to everyday working garments and uniforms in portraits, magazine editorials and social reportage. Parisian designer Paul Poiret, the self-proclaimed “King of Fashion”, used them to advertise his Rosine perfumes, housed in their exquisite, jewel-hued bottles and colourful hand-painted packaging. Now we can see that the silks, richly patterned brocades, glossy satins and gleaming velvet of that time are not only made up in the so-called sweet pea colours associated with the Belle Époque, but also in silver, gold, dark green, purple, crimson and steely grey. Curly ostrich plumes dyed improbable hues adorn vast hats; evening dresses are orange, coral, turquoise and scarlet; tailor-made suits are in a multitude of shades and fabrics. By the outbreak of the first world war, the strict codes of sartorial etiquette and the rigidly controlled silhouette of womenswear were changing. By the 1920s, tightly corseted waists and picture hats were replaced by whip-smart coats and dresses hanging straight from the shoulders, colour-co-ordinated accessories and head-hugging cloche hats. Autochrome shows off those styles in all their glory.Fashion was on the move, as was the autochrome. More than 2,000 autochromes were used to create the Salon du Goût Français in the early 1920s, a “virtual” selling exhibition depicting luxury commodities that toured internationally to boost France’s exports. It documented the aftermath of the first world war in France and recorded indigenous dress for National Geographic’s armchair travellers. But the autochrome’s success — by 1913, 6,000 plates a day were being produced — only lasted for about 10 years and by the early 1930s, sheet film processes such as the Lumières’ own Filmcolor (1932) had become the future of colour photography. Autochrome had had its day, but not before it revolutionised how people saw themselves and their clothes. Despite the autochrome’s ability to connect us to people and their lives from more than a century ago, it has been criticised for reinforcing a nostalgic version of history. According to Wood, it gave the world “a softness it has never known”. Yet the autochrome was a thoroughly modern technological breakthrough using innovative production methods that advanced photography, and in turn, the representation and dissemination of fashion. It illuminates for us today how fashion was really lived — in many different hues of beautiful, vital colour.‘The Colour of Clothes: Fashion and Dress in Autochromes 1907-1930’ by Cally Blackman is published by Thames & Hudson and available now
