Katalin F. Dózsa: The Professional Oeuvre of Éva Mészáros
How does a young woman preparing for a career as a fine artist become, for more than forty years, one of the defining figures of Hungarian fashion? By her own admission, Éva Mészáros arrived at this path for practical reasons. The generation that grew up after the Second World War had first-hand experience of hunger and acute poverty. She was told that paintings were difficult to sell, and that it would be wiser to become an applied artist.
Éva Mészáros would have made an excellent graphic artist and watercolourist; yet she ultimately found her true place in a suddenly chosen life path – that of fashion design. This was not merely because her graphic skills proved indispensable, but rather because she regarded a garment as a painterly creation, and constantly sought to produce something new, something fresh. And what is fashion, if not the invention of novelty?
At the outset of her career, her work was characterised by finely sensitive croquis and delicately glazed watercolours; her fashion drawings still tended to follow others, those who had gone before her, though executed with the same sensitivity and virtuosity evident in her sketches made at markets, in gardens, and elsewhere. From the 1960s onwards, her own fashion-graphic world gradually took shape – a world that continued to change over the years – ranging from the stricter, two-dimensional, constructive drawings of the 1970s to the light, seemingly offhand walnut-stain and ink drawings of the 1980s and 1990s. In her case, change is not the sign of some kind of artistic reinvention, but rather of play, of exercises for the hand – graphic solutions adapted to a continually renewing fashion – something akin to asking: let us try this as well, and that too; which suits the forms better? At any moment, she is capable of sitting down and committing a figure to paper in a style characteristic of any of her periods. All of them are hers, to this very day.
The profession is usually divided in two. There are brilliant draughtsmen – who generally do not design, but give visual form on paper to the designs of others – and there are great creators who primarily think and design in terms of material. They can, of course, draw as well, but they tend to sketch working drawings instead. In Éva Mészáros’s case, the two talents have fused. Even her working drawings are of a graphic artist’s calibre, yet what she creates with material is truly the most exciting. She is equally at home in the worlds of men’s, women’s, and children’s dress.
She began her professional career in 1955 at the Váci Street salon of the Fővárosi Mértékutáni Szabóság (lit. Metropolitan Made-to-Measure Tailoring Company, [a state-run bespoke tailoring organisation in socialist Hungary]). This was the predecessor of the later Budapest Szalon, which – alongside Klára Rotschild – functioned as the stronghold of socialist Hungarian fashion. During these two years, she learned the profession in practice.
In 1957 she moved to the Magyar Divatintézet (lit. Hungarian Fashion Institute) – at that time still operating under the name Ruhaipari Tervező Vállalat (lit. Garment Industry Design Company) – where she worked until the end of 1988. This was the period when the Fashion Institute truly functioned as the primary centre of Hungarian fashion. Those working there at the time enjoyed opportunities and achieved results that young designers today can scarcely imagine. Éva Mészáros made full use of these possibilities, becoming one of the leading grande dames shaping Hungarian fashion – first as chief designer, and later as head of the Konfekció Stúdió (lit. Ready-to-Wear Studio).
The Hungarian Fashion Institute served as a vital link between the functioning Hungarian ready-to-wear industry and the world’s fashion capitals. Its tasks included, on the one hand, the dissemination of the latest international trends and, on that basis, the design of collections – in some cases for specific large enterprises – and, on the other hand, the professional guidance of individual ready-to-wear factories.
Before the Second World War, the European ready-to-wear industry primarily produced inexpensive market goods and uniforms. After the war, severe clothing shortages led to the adoption of the far more advanced methods of mass garment production developed in North America. By the 1960s, in Western Europe, modern ready-to-wear gradually displaced traditional made-to-measure clothing; even the clientele of better tailoring shops and salons were won over by small-batch producers of so-called ‘prêt-à-porter’. The major fashion-setting houses of so-called ‘haute couture’ likewise increasingly concentrated on high-quality ready-to-wear production.
A similar process unfolded in Hungary, albeit with direct state intervention [the centrally planned socialist economic system of the post-1948 period]. Large factories and cooperatives were formed from older small workshops and from the employees of nationalised private tailoring businesses, but these new entities were largely left to their own devices and struggled to meet the new demands. They were unfamiliar with up-to-date technologies; model selection was often arbitrary, and factories lacked professionally trained designers. Hungarian ready-to-wear was therefore highly underdeveloped – its models awkward and poorly conceived.
As a result of the work of Éva Mészáros and her contemporaries, however, Hungarian ready-to-wear gradually reached an international standard – at least in terms of export production. From the 1960s onwards, a clear distinction emerged between the models shown at fashion presentations, produced primarily for export, and those available in shops. Yet the public could see photographs of these designs in Nők Lapja, Ez a Divat, and later Pesti Divat [popular magazines for women]; even if they could not buy them ready-made, they could at least imitate them. Through their drawings and models, Éva Mészáros and her colleagues shaped the taste of an entire country.
“Perhaps fashion designers elsewhere never had the opportunity not only to design the garment itself, but the person’s entire appearance – the unified visual whole from head to toe, including hairstyle and even facial expression. This was our task,” she wrote in her autobiographical volume A magam módján (lit. In My Own Fashion, 2003). When needed, she gave advice at the Budapesti Nemzetközi Vásár (Budapest International Fair, BNV), at public meetings, to sales staff in clothing shops, and she delivered lectures on the principles of good taste. To this day, she regards the elevation of the general standard of taste as one of her principal missions.
Taste education was also the guiding aim behind the photographs published in Pesti Divat, where, as picture editor, she refused to be satisfied merely with selecting images from the photographs and drawings submitted for publication. In a manner unusual at the time, she had models photographed at museum exhibitions, in sculptors’ studios, and in front of the fine buildings of Budapest’s Castle District. A perfectionist, she always demanded the utmost from those she worked with; yet people were glad to collaborate with her, knowing that the end result – success – would ultimately vindicate her expectations.
Alongside women’s fashion, she designed charming children’s clothing, but within the Fashion Institute her principal field was menswear. This was, in fact, the most difficult task of all. Menswear changes the least; it is conservative, and yet it is precisely subtle variations that prompt people to buy new clothes. In ready-to-wear production, at the same time, it is a matter of survival whether the latest technologies are known – technologies that make perfect cutting possible. Éva Mészáros mastered these and passed them on. When necessary, she even used her press card to gain access to closely guarded professional secrets. She also enthusiastically promoted the idea that men, too, were allowed – indeed obliged – to care about their appearance. Not only did she design elegant and comfortable menswear, but she also organised the first fashion show intended exclusively for men, at which handsome models paraded bearing the slogan ‘We want equality’.
At the same time, she designed uniforms for, among others, Malév [Hungary’s former national airline (1946–2012)], the Police, and the Hotel InterContinental Budapest. In the 1980s she also tried her hand at leather fashion, designing for the Pécs Leather Factory and the Hunor Glove Factory.
To this day, she continues to drift back and forth towards the field of textile art. Her thread-based works and textile cuttings that generate striking geometric forms arise from her acute sensitivity to material and form, and are executed with the same thoroughness and precision as a high-quality bespoke garment. Textile pictures become garments, and garments in turn become textile pictures. Such were, for example, her patchwork-style dresses and coats assembled from pieces of leather in the late 1960s. The arrangement of forms and their stitching side by side constituted an act of image-making, yet the result was ultimately an item of dress – one that she produced in the hundreds (by hand, herself, day and night) for destinations all over the world; were she willing to do so today, many would still place orders. Another fine example is the so-called Laufer collection, which she assembled for the 1987 exhibition at the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle, Budapest). The task was for artists to make use of the so-called ‘laufers’ – strips of material that preserve the paint imprints beneath screen-printed fabric. Éva Mészáros hand-painted these textiles using various techniques, and from them created straight-cut garments that allowed the patterns to assert themselves fully.
In the 1990s, her time, talent, and above all her organisational abilities were absorbed by a major project involving numerous colleagues, first titled Modern Etnikum (lit. Modern Ethnicity), later Modern Etnika (lit. Modern Ethnic). Holding the group together, organising exhibitions, and managing collaborations proved a more demanding task than creating models that radiated timeless beauty. Éva Mészáros wanted the world to become acquainted with the beauty of Hungarian art; she sought to demonstrate that there was indeed ‘life’ beyond shops selling folk-art curios and kitsch. The forms of folk art could be used in entirely different ways – and she, together with the group of artists energised by her restless activity, succeeded so convincingly that they achieved major success everywhere from Prague to Tokyo, from Helsinki to Budapest.
Formed in 1990 as a loosely organised collective, assembled specifically for this purpose and with a constantly changing membership, the group initially set itself the goal of having a complete body of work ‘come together’ by 1996 – material that, depending on the individual designers’ approaches, would illustrate the Hungarian world of taste in diverse and multifaceted forms. Yet it proved impossible to stop in 1996 – because the work continued to be in demand everywhere. Nor could Éva Mészáros stop. And if the material was heading to yet another exhibition, who had ever heard of fashion that does not change? Thus, within Éva Mészáros’s oeuvre, ever new pieces inspired by folk traditions came into being – and continue to do so.
Over the past decade, it has primarily been the material itself – the fall, folds, and beauty of lace and silk – that has preoccupied Éva Mészáros. She has remained within the sphere of folk art, insofar as the exceptionally high-quality Halas lace [a renowned Hungarian needle lace traditionally produced in Kiskunhalas] may be considered part of folk art, as she often used it to adorn her ‘garments’ wound around mannequins and fixed with pins. This gave rise to the exhibition series titled Improvizációk a halasi csipkéről (lit. Improvisations on Halas Lace). Of these works, only photographs now remain. There was, it is true, a French company that asked her to prepare production designs so that luxury garments might be manufactured from them, but by then she no longer felt inclined to pursue this path.
By now, the painter-in-the-making has become a true ‘fashion artist’ – concerned solely with creation itself. Once her improvisations are completed, their subsequent fate no longer engages her. In this way, they become finished works of art – that is, installation pieces.
[2012]