Colour, movement and modernity in Sonia Delaunay’s (1926) fashion film

Abstract

Sonia Delaunay is best known for her abstract and colourful style which is manifested across her artwork, fashion, textile and interior designs alike. In 1926, this culminated in a fashion film, titled ‘L’Elégance’. Shot using the Keller-Dorian colour process, the film features a succession of Delaunay’s simultaneous fashion and textile designs. This article explores the implications and origins of the film, considering technological, cultural and social factors. It focuses on the themes of colour and movement that were essential both to the film and Delaunay’s philosophy at large and were strongly related by Delaunay and her contemporaries to modernity and women’s liberation. The author positions Delaunay’s earlier work as a form of proto-cinema and demonstrates how her film uniquely transfers aesthetic and cultural themes. She explains why fashion film was a necessary step for Delaunay and how she employed notions of temporality to further fashion film as an avant-garde form.