Consumptive chic for women???

Consumptive Chic: History of Beauty, Fashion & Disease 2017 by Dr Carolyn Day examined the connection between fashion and Tuber­culosis/TB. The book was beautifully written and illustrated, but I was angry on women’s behalf while reading. In an era ignorant about TB, the tuber­cular body came to be defined cul­t­urally. During the late 18th-early C19ths this became romant­ic­is­ed i.e people actively redefined notions of the otherwise horrib­le sympt­oms as ideals of beauty.

Dropsy and Consumption flirting outside a mausoleum.
Credit: Wellcome Collection

Illustrated with fashion plates and medical images, this was a clear story of the rise of Consumptive Chic which described the strange link between women’s fashions and medical thinking re TB. Thus two belief systems developed in a connected fashion:

1. Women's in­herent feminine character/way of life rendered them naturally sus­cep­t­ible to contracting TB.

2.  Despite the changing fashions over decades, TB’s symptoms were believed to increase the attractive­ness of its victim over time. Once they contracted TB, patients were indeed more likely to die. But they would be increasingly beautiful as they approached death. The emaciated figure and fev­erish flush of TB victims were positively promoted as a highly desirable appearance. As were the long swan-like necks, large dil­ated eyes, luxurious eye lashes, white teeth, pale comp­lex­ions, blue veins and rosy cheeks.

Women focused on their eyes by painting eye liner and eye shadow onto their faces, even though these eye paints contained dangerous mer­cury (causing kidney damage), radium, lead or antimony oxide (a carcin­ogen). Women placed poisonous nightshade drops in their eyes, to enlargen their pupils. And they bathed in pois­onous arsenic, to make their skin desirably pale. The poison vermillion was worn on the lips as a lush red tint. How brutal, then, that medical writers knew that the fash­ionable way of life of many women actually harmed them.

What would inspire largely educat­ed classes to respond to illness through the channels of fashion? Why would people try to glamorise the symptoms of a deadly disease?? Day showed that consumption was seen to confer beauty on its victim. Yes it was a disease, but one that would become a positive event in women’s lives.

The Victorian corset was a heavy duty clothing apparatus, capable of constricting a woman's waist down to a tiny 17”;  this and an hourglass figure were all the rage in the C19th. Dresses were desig­n­ed to feature the bony wing-like shoulder blades of the consumpt­ive back, emphasising an emaciated frame. Additionally, diaphanous dresses and sandals exposed women to cold weather.

The coughing, emaciation, endless diarrhoea, fever and coughing of phlegm and blood became both a sign of beauty and also a fashion­ab­le disease. As obscene as it seems now, TB was depicted as an easy and beautiful way to fade into death. It was neither!!

Day noted the dis­ease’s connections to the Romantic poets and to scholars in the early C19th. Literary influence was important for educated women; most Romantic writers, artists and composers with TB created a myth that consumption drove male artistic genius. The link coincided with the ideolog­ies of Romanticism, a philosophical movement that opposed the En­lighten­ment through its emphasis on emotion and imag­ination. These men were the best, most intelligent & brightest members of society. Lord Byron (1788-1824), the most notorious of the Romantic poets, noted that his TB affliction caused ladies to look at him with heartbreak. The poet John Keats (1795-1821) embod­ied an example of the refined tubercular artistic genius, doom­ed to a very early death. He was a body too delicate to endure earthly life, but one whose intellect indelibly imprinted on culture.

And artistic women too. The link between TB and ideal femininity was played up by Alexandre Dumas fils whose novel La Dame aux Camélias (1848) presented redemption for immor­al­ity via the suffering of TB. The consumptive model Elizabeth Siddal, the drowned Ophelia in John Everett Millais’ pre-Raphaelite painting of 1851, became an icon for her generation.

There was less interest in the appearance of TB in the lower classes. Not because working women and prostitutes deserved a miserable and painful death, but because the lower classes showed how women real­ly suff­ered TB’s brutal realities. TB was explained away rather realistically in the working classes: miserable living cond­itions, pollution, poor hygiene, poverty, promis­cuity and drunkedness. TB was not romantic and beautiful for working women.

Tuberculosis shaped Victorian fashion
Furman News, 1888

Could the different reactions to TB, the glamorisation of the ill­ness for upper class women Vs the bleak experience of TB in impov­erished Victorian communities, be there to maintain class order in Britain? Perhaps fashion-setters elevated TB as an elegant form of suffering for the upper classes, specifically to create a psychological dis­tance from the unsavoury realities of lower-class disease? No won­der TB victims from the British upper classes were lauded while poor vic­t­ims were stigmatised.

My blog-partner-doctor wanted to know why other diseases like cholera did not have the same cultural impact? Because, Day said, in­fectious diseases followed an epidemic pattern. First they inc­r­eased very quickly; then they slowly faded in intensity and incidence. The course of TB was less flashy than other contagious illnesses, but it still followed a ve ry slow epidemic cycle of infection.

New Medical Knowledge 

A much better understanding of TB came in 1882 when germ theory was described by Louis Pasteur. In that year Robert Koch announced he'd discovered and isolated the micro­­sc­opic bac­teria that cause the disease. Koch’s discovery helped convince public health experts that TB was contagious. And that the victim’s sparkling or dilated eyes, rosy cheeks and red lips were caused by frequent low-grade fever

Preventing the spread of TB led to some of the first large-scale public health campaigns. Doctors began to define long, trailing skirts as causes of disease because they swept up germs from the street. Corsets were also believed to exacerbate TB by limiting move­ment of the lungs and blood circulation. And doctors began prescribing sunbathing as a treatment for TB. Eventually TB was viewed as a pernicious biological force requiring control. The weak and susceptible female gave way to a model of health and strength. 

NB Emily Mullin How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion

  

Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, c1852, Tate 

The tubercular model Elizabeth Siddal became an icon for her generation.

Ralph Lauren, still a luxury life!

Born Ralph Lipschitz in 1939 to Jewish immigrant parents Frank (from Belarus) and Frieda Lipschitz (from Poland), Ralph was the youngest of 4 siblings. The family wasn’t rich, living in a poor Bronx neighbourhood. So Ralph occupied himself in the cinema world to escape boredom.

Despite his humble origins, he was thinking big. In his 1957 High School yearbook, he wrote being a millionaire was his life goal! Was this the lad behind the fashion house fortune?   

Left: daughter Dylan Lauren, Ralph, Ricky, sons Andrew and David

at the Ralph Lauren in NY City.

people.com

 

Michael Gross* described how the youth used his vivid imagination to step into the fictional world of cinema greats like Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Lipschitz changed his name to Lauren in his late teens, after reportedly enduring years of teasing from his surname. In 1962, at 23, he joined the US Army and served until 1964, when he took a clerk job at Brooks Brothers, the oldest men’s clothing American brand.

In Dec 1964, Lauren married Ricky Loew-Beer in NY, dance teacher and author. They remained members of Park Ave Synagogue Manhattan, and had 3 children. [In 2011, their son David married Lauren Bush, granddaughter of ex-Pres George H Bush and the niece of ex-Pres George W Bush].

Lauren then worked for Beau Brummell, a famous tie manufacturer. Ralph persuaded the company president to let him design his own line of ties; hence the Ralph Lauren Corporation was born in 1967. His interest in sport then led to the launch of his iconic brand Polo. Watching his first polo match had activated his entrepreneurial spirit. He went with friend Warren Helstein who described how they were exposed to fabulous things; horses, silver, leather, tall blondes in hats and high society.

Ralph Lauren opened luxury flagship in Miami

in 2023

It spurred Lauren into developing an elegant and high-class brand, which later became known as Polo Ralph Lauren. It was a massive risk launching the company, as he had only a high school diploma and some business classes, never finishing studies at the City Uni of New York.

His next big risk was designing wide, colourful ties, in an era when plain and narrow was the fashion. His radical approach paid dividends – Bloomingdale’s loved it and bought $500,000 of ties in his first year.

Polo Ralph Lauren pure silk tie

Reddit

Lauren continued expanding his company. He believed in enjoying the moment, constantly moving forward. When it came to designing clothing, he came up with designs that he would want to wear himself. He imagined clothing fit for movie stars. “The things that I made, you could not find them anywhere,” he said.

He had started out in menswear, not launching his first tailored shirts for women until 1971, with his now-famous Polo player emblem. He also opened his ship on Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills, that year! His signature cotton Polo short was launched in 1972, while his range of fragrances made their debut at Bloomingdale’s in March 1978.

                                             

His outfits for men and women were unfussy and very smart. Denim was very popular.

                          

He opened his flagship store on Madison Avenue and 72nd St in New York in 1986. In 1992, Lauren launched his iconic Polo Sport line, followed by additional lines and acquired brands eg Ralph Lauren Purple Label in 1995. His company was publicly traded on the NY Stock Exchange in June 1997.

The 98-seat restaurant RL opened in 1999 in Chicago in a newly built building adjacent to the largest Ralph Lauren store at cnr Chicago and Michigan Avenues. It was followed by the opening of two additional restaurants, Ralph's in Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris flagship shop in 2010 and The Polo Bar at Polo's flagship shop in New York in 2015. I have never been in any of these 3 restaurants.

The marketing genius is that his brand conjured romantic, nostalgic visions of rugged wranglers, and clean, Ivy League privilege, yet Lauren made billions from polo shirts and denim. But in 2016 Ralph Lauren brand seemed to be stressed. Analysts criticised discounting, claiming they cheapened its image, while a failure to attract younger buyers was also relevant. In 2017 the designer responded by launching wearable tech in a fitness technology shirt, combined with a mobile app. The Polo Tech Smartshirt athletic apparel pioneered physical tracking technology. It was embedded with sensors, tracking heart rates, breathing, stress level and calories burned. Data were streamed to an app that generated workout programmes, enabling Polo Sport to compete with sports brands eg Nike and Adidas.

Ralph Lauren's Celeb-Packed Show in the Hamptons

2024, Getty

Summary
Amassing a fortune, fashion designer Ralph Lauren went from rags to riches. The army veteran and former clerk earned his fortune through building an empire with his Polo clothing brand, launched in 1968. Thus the Bronx lad who dreamed of becoming rich is a multi-billionaire, with homes in Long Island, Jamaica and Manhattan, plus a huge Colorado range. He stepped down as CEO in Sept 2015, remaining executive chairman. In April 2024, his net worth was cUS$9 billion.

photo credit: Ralph Lauren Corporation.

In Jan 2025 President Joe Biden awarded Lauren the Presidential Medal of Freedom, making him the first fashion designer ever to receive the highest civilian honour. 

*Read Biographer Michael Gross’ Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren, 2003.

Australia's national hat, the akubra.

Australian Army hat, wool felt 

Rising sun badge and puggaree 

Everything Australian

The origin of the slouch hat began with the Victorian Mounted Rifles in 1885. The Victorian hat was an ordinary bush felt hat turned up on the right side so it would not be caught during the drill movement of shoulder arms. By 1890, State military commandants had agreed that all Australian forces should wear a looped-up hat of uniform pattern turned up on the right side in Victoria and Tasmania, and on the left in other States, depending on drill movements. The slouch hat became standardised headdress in 1903, a famous symbol of Australian soldiers in WW1 and WW2. Now, as we will see, it is a national symbol.

Soldiers parade on Anzac Day

Facebook 

Slouch hats worn by Armoured Corps men were adorned with emu plumes. This tradition originated with the Queensland Mounted Infantry during the great shearers’ strike in 1891 when the Infantry came to aid the civil power. The soldier rode his horse alongside emus, plucked a breast feather, and placed it on the hats. The Gympie Squadron was the first to wear feathers and the rest of the regiment soon followed. The Queensland government permitted the Regiment to adopt the plume as part of its uniform, in thanks for service. In 1915, Minister for Defence granted all Australian Light Horse units permission to wear the plume.

When killed at Gallipoli, Commander General of Australia’s Imperial Force was found wearing his slouch hat reversed. From then, when the hat was worn at Royal Military College Duntroon, it became usual to wear the chinstrap buckle on the right side and the brim down. Plus wearing the brim down provided additional protection from the sun.

The puggaree originated from the Hindu pagri i.e a thin scarf of muslin. Intended for insulation, the puggaree was a traditional Indian head-wrap, adapted by the British and worn in hot regions. In WW1, a plain khaki cloth band was added and this practice continued until in 1930, new puggarees were issued to Commonwealth Military Force with different coloured folds, denoting Arm or Service. The puggaree has 8 pleats, with 7 representing each state and 1 for the Australian Territories. Made from light khaki cotton it is worn on the slouch hat with a unit colour patch on the right side. Troops who were on active service in the Middle East wore a folded puggaree as a mark of active service.

The word Akubra was ?derived from an Aboriginal word for head covering. Wide-brimmed, fur-felt Akubra hats are a traditional part of outdoor clothing in the Australian bush, protecting wearers from sun and rain. They are still worn by stockmen, hunters, graziers, farmers and horsemen, the rural community accounting for 70% of sales. It was closely associated with Australian identity.

Australian cattle men on horses

Austockphoto

Akubra has been producing high-quality hats since 1874. Founded by Benjamin Dunkerley the company started in Hobart where they created new pieces of machinery for hat making. Workers on the factory floor use traditional felting methods that were available then. But in 1904 they were joined by Stephen Keir who brought his great experience. After Dunkerley died in 1918, ownership of the company shifted to Keir I. Since then the Akubra brand passed down the generations of his family in Kempsey (North Coast NSW).

Hat sales declined in the Depression so the 200+ staff took a 10% pay cut to avoid redundancies. The business re-grew with staff numbers peaking in the 1940s, thanks to ongoing military contracts. When Stephen Keir retired in 1952, production was at a record high. He was succeeded as Managing Director by eldest son, Herbert. 2nd son, Stephen Keir II, became Managing Director 20 years later.

Olympics and films

Australian team, 1988

Opening ceremony Seoul Olympics

In 1956, Akubra supplied the Panama straw hats worn by the Australian team at the Melbourne Olympics. By the 1960s consumer production was made of 60% city hats, but when the price of wool rose, the company focused on fur felt hats instead. The purpose-built factory in Kempsey was built in 1972, establishing Akubra as the region’s major employer. In 1982 The Man From Snowy River released and the hat inspired by the film became a staple in the range. It was estimated that 21+ mill hats were made by then. Stephen Keir III became Managing Director in 1980. Son Graham joined in 1972, later as National Sales Manager.

  

Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee 1986 made the Akubra even more sexy.  

The film remains the top-earning Australian film at the box office. 

Everything Australian

In 1988, Kempsey became The Akubra Home but variations were introduced. The Aussie Gold hat was made for the Australians at LA Games 1984. Greg Norman signed on with Akubra in 1987 and the Great White Shark hat went into production. The Aussie team wore Akubra hats at the Seoul Olympics and another Olympic version for Barcelona Olympics. The Spirit of Australia style arrived for 2000 Sydney Olympics. Another great example of the quality workmanship was found in the Banjo Paterson Akubra, named for the famous Australian poet.

Stephen Keir III retired as Managing Director in Dec 2007, allowing the 4th generation, Stephen Keir IV, to become Managing Director. In 2010, after working with the company for 56+ years, Stephen Keir III stepped down as Chairman of the Board and Stephen Keir IV became Chairman of the Board of Directors. In May 2012 Stephen Keir III died, survived by his wife and former Director Wendy, daughters Stacey and Nikki (both directors of Akubra Hats), son and Chairman of the Board of Directors Stephen Maitland Keir IV.

Jan 26th is Australia Day, the day the nation celebrates the founding of the first British colony in Sydney in 1788. By 2015 Akubra has produced 2 mill hats, still proudly made in Kempsey NSW, and still worn in Australian parades. Thank you to Akubra Story for dates and family names.

Helen in an akubra and spouse

introductory photo in Art and Architecture, mainly

2024 - great year for Tamara de Lempicka!

Madonna will showcase Lempicka’s art on her Celebration Concert Tour, Lempicka The Musical on Broadway in Mar 2024. An exhibit­ion at San Francisco’s Legion of Honour Museum will reevaluate her style in art history by int­rod­ucing 1920-30s Paris culture. And a documentary The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka & the Art of Survival will appear in 2024! What a year!! 

Portrait Of Dr Boucard 1929

with test tube and microscope.

Maria Gorzka (1898-1980) was born in ?Moscow, dau­ghter of a Russian Jew­ish solicitor for a French trading comp­any, Boris Górs­ki. After her parents divorc­ed, Maria lived with grand­ma on the French Riv­ie­ra. In a St Pe­t­­ersburg opera in 1914, Maria met Tad­eusz Lempicki (1888–1951), a hand­some law­y­er of noble family. 2 years later they mar­­r­ied in St Pet­ersburg with her banker-uncle giving the dowry. A year later Tad­uesz was arrested by the Bolsheviks; Tamara got him freed and the couple and baby fled to Paris, with other wealthy White Russ­ians. 

Mad­ame Bouc­ard in  lavish silk, jew­els and mink

1931

In her early Pa­ris life, she enrolled at Académie de la Grande Chaum­ière and ab­sor­bed the Old Masters, especially Bronzino. She drew on the Cubism of her Paris con­tempor­aries and French Deco cr­eated a glam­orous Paris epitomising Tamara's life and art. Her mentor was artist-critic André Lhote, creator of a gent­ly coloured Cub­ism.

Deco made great progress in fine arts and industrial designs, bas­ed on simple format, clean lines and viv­id colours. The improve­ment of tech­nology, in industries like cars, ships and tr­ains, emp­h­asised stylised angular forms. Lempicka found soul mates in fas­h­­ion illustrator Erte, glass artist Rene Lalique and designer Cass­an­d­re. Lempicka found her place as a port­raitist of the era's beaut­iful peop­le, mixing with André Gide, Col­­ette and Jean Cocteau. Although marr­ied with a daugh­ter, Tamara was busy having romantic involve­ments with both genders, patrons and models. And because tourism was ma­king Montmartre too crowded and expensive, most art­ists gradually moved to Mont­parnasse with its wide boul­ev­ards and small courtyards. Pablo Pic­asso, Con­stantin Bran­cu­si, Jac­ques Lipchitz, Tris­tan Tzara & Piet Mondrian we­re Tamara's neigh­bours in this cen­tre of art studios.

By 1923 she exhibited in small galleries. Her work was shown at the 1924 Pa­r­is Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes, and in 1925 she had her first Milan solo. Her soc­ial life also blos­somed, displaying Tamara’s skill in winning many men and women lovers, her models and patrons. See the wo­men reclin­ing, bath­ing, hug­ging or stroking.

En­cour­ag­ed by Coco Chanel  and the Fl­appers, Tamara went to ch­ap­er­­one-free parties, sm­oked and drove cars. The 1920s flat dresses provid­ed an ideal canvas to dis­play Deco taste. In 1927 Lemp­icka re­ceived 1st prize at the Exposition Internat­ionale des Beaux-Arts for the portrait of her daughter Kizette on the Balcony, and divorced.

The Girl In Green With Glov­es (1929 Musée Nat­ional d'Art Moderne Paris) was a fam­ous work that cl­early epit­omised Deco and flowing curves. See the self-portrait Tamara in the Green Bug­atti (1929), in leather helmet and gloves. It was the cover of a Ger­man Women's Li­berat­ion magazine Die Dame: tight, post-cubist des­ign; muted col­our; sp­eed; glamour; Her­mès helmet; leather driving gloves! F Scott Fitz­g­er­ald popularised sporty outfits; and clothes and hats were desig­ned for ships, trains or cars. Jean Patou, Ma­d­­eleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiap­­ar­elli created excellent moving styles.

Examine Lempicka's males. The huge portrait of Duke Gabriel Const­ant­inov­ich (1926) wore a gold-braid­ed un­iform and empty face. Count Fürstenberg Herd­ringen 1928 was a glass-eyed monster in a French navy beret. In the late 1920s her most import­ant patron was flashy medico Dr Pierre Boucard (1929) who already owned some Lempicka nudes. Boucard gave her a 2-year contract to paint family portr­aits.

This new income bought a Left Bank 3-sorey studio house in Rue Me­ch­ain; grey int­er­ior, chrome fittings & American cock­tail bar gave Lempicka her sett­ing. On the easel was the port­r­ait of Mad­ame Bouc­ard (1931), a complex work done by this connoisseur of text­iles, jew­els, hairstyles and mink boa. In Port­rait of Madame M 1931, Tam­ara showed sleekness .  

Tamara sold her expensive portraits to Paris’ rich aristocracy. She painted writ­ers, entert­ainers, artists and Eastern Eur­ope's ex­iled nobility. One of her wea­l­thiest patrons Baron Raoul Kuff­ner (1886–1961) owned vast estates donat­ed to his brewer family by Emp­eror Franz-Josef for supplying the Hapsb­urg court. Kuffner asked Tamara to paint a port­rait of his mistress Andalusian dan­cer Nana de Herrera but while painting the Baron’s port­rait, Lempicka got involved with him, re­plac­ed his mistress and married him in 1934

La Music­ienne 1929

Lempicka understood political chaos, and enc­ouraged her husband to secure his assets. So Kuffner sold his Hungarian estates. When WW2 started in 1939, the coup­le left Paris and moved to Holly­wood. They lived in film director King Vidor’s old home, and Tamara soon bec­ame an artist of Hollywood's screen stars. Lempicka also bus­ied herself with war relief work and after an ext­ended st­ruggle, resc­ued her daughter Kizette from Nazi-occupied Par­is in 1941. In 1943 they cont­inued to soc­ialise in N.Y, al­though her art out­put reduced; conservatism st­arted to ch­allenge the fem­in­ist ad­van­ces she’d championed. Nonethe­less when WW2 end­ed, she reop­ened her famous Paris studio.

When the Baron died in 1961, Tamara sold up and sailed away. Then she moved to Houston Tx to be closer to her daught­er and produced abstract paint­ings to remain in-step with cur­rent art. Only in 1966 did Musee des Arts Decorat­ifs open her memor­ial exh­ib­ition, then Al­ain Blondel open­ed Galerie du Lux­embourg with a major Lempicka re­tr­ospective in 1972. But in 1978 she moved to Mex­ico, bought a special house and died in 1980.

Madame M sold for $6.13 million at Christie's NY in 2009. Lempicka's auc­t­ion record, $9.1m, was set by Chris­tie’s in 2018 for La Music­ienne (1929) showing a mandolin player in vivid blue. A new record was set when La Tun­ique Rose (1927) earned $13.3m at Sotheby’s N.Y in 2019. Now Por­trait de Marjorie Fer­ry (Paris, 1932) earned £16.4 in Chris­­t­ie’s London in 2020!! Many thanks to theartstory. 

 stylish Bar Lempicka in Amsterdam

See the Art Deco glass mosaic on the ceiling

and the Lempicka name on the facade

Straw hat riots of New York, 1922: a teenage prank or dangerous riots?

A baseball crowd showed how popular straw boaters were in summer. 

Ripley's

Throughout history, social mores have helped dictate per­sonal styl­es. Straw hats in America appeared in the 1890s and early C20th, largely as summertime wear related to sporting events like boating (hence boater). Initially the hat was not con­sidered good form for soph­isticated, big-city-men, even at the height of summer. But that too changed. By the early C20th, straw boaters were considered acceptable day attire in American cit­ies in summer, even for professionals and businessmen, but note there was the 15th Sept rule when felt hats became mandatory.

This date seemed arbitrary; earlier it had been 1st Sept, but it event­ually shifted to mid-month. And summer doesn’t officially end until 21st Sept in the USA! Nonetheless if any man was seen wear­ing a straw hat after the cut-off date, he KNEW youths would knock the hat off and stomp on it. 

A Pittsburgh Press article (15/9/1910) noted that pol­ice had to in­tervene occasionally to “protect straw-lidded pedest­r­ians.” They ex­plained that it was socially ac­ceptable for stock­brokers to dest­roy each other’s hats because they are among friends, but not right for a stranger to do so. If the in­form­­ality should become general, there will sure to be a number of obstinate gentlemen (with English blood in their veins) who would coolly proceed to treat the fun-making as a physical assault and defend themselves in a manner which would spoil the fun for all concerned. 

This tradition became well established, and newspap­ers of the day would often warn people of the impending approach of the 15th, when men would have to switch hats. As the New York Times ?joked, any man who wore a straw hat after this date “may even be a Bolsh­evik, a com­munal enemy, a potential sub­verter of the social order.

 
Boaters were still popular in the Roaring 20s. Few cities took the change-over date more seriously than fashion-conscious New Yorkers; these street-smart men knew bet­ter than to be seen wearing a straw hat out of season. But if the straw hat story had merely been letting off adolescent steam, the tradit­ion suddenly became very dangerous.

A full-blown N.Y riot started on 13th Sept 1922, two days before the straw hat ban would take effect. The Straw Hat Riot started when the lads got a jump-start on the trad­it­ion by grabbing and stomping on the hats of fact­ory workers in Manhattan’s Mulberry Bend section. The more innocent stomping turned into a brawl when the rowdy hoodlums attacked a group of dock work­ers, and the dock workers fought back. The 1922 brawl, which  totally stop­ped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge, lasted for days!

No literate New Yorker could claim ignorance of the riots.

The New York Tribune and other papers were full of the details

I was interested to read contemporary newspaper reports, to see if they under-stated the boyish conflict that had been underway. New York Times reported that hundreds of boys terrorised straw-lidded cit­iz­ens, forcing them to run through a gauntlet. To make the job of rip­ping off hats easier, many lads were pre-armed with large sticks. Some had nails protruding on the ends, to help hook the straw hats off peop­le’s heads, often leaving victims with serious injuries and hospitalisation. Police claimed 1,000 teens were part of a roaming mob on Amst­er­dam Ave, continuing the riot the following night. But only seven men were convicted of disorderly conduct in the Men’s Night Court.

New York Tribune said: Boys who were guided by the calendar rat­her the weather, and by their own trouble-making procl­iv­ities, indulged in a straw hat-smashing orgy through­out the city. NYC police off­icers were told to be on guard for hoodlums and did so with ext­reme prej­ud­ice, but the police were often outnumbered. 12 were arrested and 7 were spanked ignomin­ious­ly by their parents, on the order of the East 104th St police. Many of those arrested and taken to court were too young to be gaoled, so most opted to be fined instead.

Even if 17 year old boys were illiterate immature morons, did they not know about the riots and bombs that were ruining Americans’ lives in 1920 and 1921? Foreign anarchists were thought to be re­sponsible for bombings and mass deaths in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago etc. The police could not have known yet about the 1927 bombing massacre in Bath Mi, of course, but the atmosphere of fear was well and truly in place.

Sept 1922 saw the worst part of the straw hat riots, although no one died in the riot that year. Even in 1923 & 24, the police were slow to respond to the riots, but several off-duty police off­icers found themselves caught up in the brawl. In any case, more workers were hosp­it­alised from the beatings they received and many arrests were made. And note that in 1924, a man did indeed die during the riots.

In 1925 the U.S President Coolidge was seen wearing a straw hat on 18th Sept, a “shocking” move which received front page cover­age from the Times: Discard Date for Straw Hats Ig­nored by Pres Calvin Coolidge. Note the riots were a boon for hat shops, which stayed open late to provide soft head-wear for those who feared being attacked. In any case, after the U.S President rejected the ritual, straw hat-smashing did event­ually die out. 

Come Sept each year, ads for the new autumn hats started appearing

Credit: Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog

Was anything learned from this bit of post-WW1 history?

Frida Kahlo's house museum, Mexico City

Australia is presenting a wonder­ful exhib­ition, Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution (Jun-Sep 2023) in South Aust­ralia’s Art Gallery from Jacques and Natasha Gelman's collection of Mexican modernism. But what about Kahl­o’s own Mexican home, la Casa Azul/Blue House?

Visitors queuing to enter Frida Kahlo Museum

 

The house was built in 1904 with a French-inspired design in the Coyoacán neighbourhood, a rural and arty part of the Fed­eral District of Mexico City. Guillermo Kahlo completed the fam­ily home there before Matilde gave birth to their daughter Frida (1907-54).

Frida contracted polio at 6 and was bedridden for 9 months. The di­s­­ease caused her right leg to losing weight, limp­ing forever. So she wore long skirts for life! Her beloved fat­her encour­aged her to do sports to help her recover: so­ccer, swimm­ing, wrest­l­ing!

She attended Mexico City’s famous National Preparat­ory School in 1922 where only 35 female students were enrolled. This con­fid­ent lass first met and admired the famous Mexican Diego Riv­era who was working on the school’s assembly hall mural.

That year, Kahlo joined students who shared leftwing political views, loving the leader Alejandro Gomez Ar­ias. She and Ar­ias were on a bus when it collided with a tram and a steel handrail imp­al­ed Frida's hip. Her spine and pelvis were fractured, leaving endless pain. She had to stay in the Red Cross Hospital Mexico, then went home in a full-body cast for months. Her parents loved art, bought her br­ushes and paints, and made her a special bed-based easel. So she painted her first self-portrait in bed.

Frida's bed

with a mirror above, set into the canopy

Kahlo re-found Rivera in 1928, asking him to ev­al­uate her work and he encouraged her, professionally and rom­antically. Frida was young (21), dressy, physically handicapped and living with her parents. Rivera was middle-aged (42), totally famous and messy. Despite parental ob­jec­t­ion, Frida and Diego married in 1929 then moved around, based on Diego's work in the US.

In 1932, Kahlo painted more surrealistic components. In Henry Ford Hospital (1932) she was lying on a hospital bed naked, surr­ounded by a foetus, flow­er and pelvis, connect­ed by veins and floating. She  was pregnant but suf­fered a heart-breaking miscarr­iage from ear­lier injuries.

In 1933, Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to paint a mural at Rockefeller Centre. Rivera included Vladimir Lenin, but Rockefel­ler had Lenin painted over and the couple quickly escaped to Mexico!

Frieda and Diego Rivera, married in 1929,

She painted this wedding portrait in 1931

The couple were keeping separate homes and studios for years, yet despite the many affairs, they always returned together. In 1937 they helped Leon (and wife) Trotsky, exiled rival of insane Soviet lead­er Joseph Stalin. The Riv­er­as welcomed the Trotskys into their Blue House where Frida and Leon had a brief affair. But when the Trot­skys relocated, Leon was tragically assassinated.

In 1938 Kahlo befriended Andre Breton, a Surreal­ist who helped her create a successful gallery exhibition in N.Y. In 1939 Kahlo was in­vited by Br­eton to Paris to exhib­it her work. There she was befriended artists Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, and loved it.

The couple divorced in Nov 1939, then remarried in Dec 1940 when she showed her per­spective in Diego on My Mind (1940). Even then they had separate lives, both of them cheating. Kahlo painted some of her most famous paintings after her homecoming, in­clud­ing The Two Fridas (1939) and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird (1940).

Be­fore Frida’s father Guill­ermo's death in 1941, the couple moved to the Blue House, and quickly adapted it. The Blue House was given a bigger garden and brighter colours, especially the blue painted walls seen today, enclosing the courtyard completely. Juan O’Gorman did the redesign work in 1946. To separate the new from the old, a stone wall divided the patio area in two, with a foun­tain, stepped pyr­amid, pre-Columbian artefacts, pool and their arch­aeological collect­ion. They built a sunny art studio and covered its white faç­ade in cob­alt blue paint.

Diagnosed with foot gan­­g­rene in 1950, Frida was bedridden for another 9 months, in hosp­ital for sur­g­eries. Still, she contin­ued to work in her par­ents’ home,  her biographical paintings revealing a new approach to exploring feminism. The Blue House welcomed intel­l­ectual and avant-garde act­ivity; the couple hos­ted a special array of stars from Mexico and abroad. The house together had some of her most famous works eg Portrait of My Father (1951). 

Some of Frida's old Mexican clothes

hanging in the Museum

She had a solo exhibition and despite the pain, Frida arrived by ambulance, welcomed the at­t­endees and opened the 1953 ceremony from bed. Months later, her right leg was partly amputated to stop the gangrene. Thus her last political outing was in 1954! 

They lived in the house for the rest of Kahlo's short life. At 47, Frida died in 1954 at her beloved Blue House from a pul­monary em­bolism. The Blue House physically displayed the col­our­ful life she left and rep­res­ented her admiration for the indigen­ous Mexic­ans. Cr­utches and med­icine displayed her years of suffering, plus toys, jewellery and cloth­ing. Was she a hoarder? Probably - after all, it took years to discover the 6,500 photos and c22,000 documents left in the Blue House, along with magazines, books, paintings, drawings etc.

Frida and Diego's kitchen

 
Frida and Diego had wanted to leave her house as a museum for all Mex­ic­ans to enjoy. So the widower paid out the mortgage, and paid off the health debts for them both. Rivera set up a foundation for to preserv­e the house and con­vert­ it to a Museum dedicated to her life and works. Its administrat­ion was assigned to a trust under the central Banco de México, and constit­uted by Rivera in 1957. He had the Museum formally dedicated to her life in 1958, including its gardens.

Kahlo gardens

Museo Frida Kahlo presents the house how it was in the 1950s. In addition to the couple’s works, the museum also collects their Mexican folk art and pre-Hispanic artefacts. There are ten rooms. On the ground floor is the kit­chen where her Mex­ican culture was really vis­ible. It was trad­it­ion­ally decorated with clay pots, in bright ind­ig­enous Mexican co­lours. The second room has Frida’s let­t­ers, notes and photos, while on the walls are Frida’s trade­mark pre-Hispanic neck­laces and folk dresses. The third room has Rivera’s art. The fourth room has cont­emporary paint­ings by Paul Klee, José María Vel­asco and others. The fifth room has monsters from Teotih­uacan cul­ture that Kahlo used in her art. Her top bedroom-studio was in the wing Rivera built, with a painted plaster corset worn to sup­port her damaged spine, and a mirror still facing down.

In the 1970s inter­est in her work and life was renewed due to fem­in­­ism; she was viewed as an icon of female creat­iv­­ity. In 1983, Hayd­en Herrera published the excellent Biography of Frida Kahlo. And from 1995, read The Diary of Frida Kah­lo:  and The Letters of Frida Kahlo. 

Today, the Blue House is one of the most visited museums in Mexico City.

Self portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird, 

www.FridaKahlo.org, 1940

Royal Scotsman luxury train - fab food, whiskey, Highland scenery

Luxurious twin cabin on Royal Scotsman.

The meat, seafood and whiskey are the highlights of this train trip, none of which I touch, so I cannot write my own report. So welcome to the Royal Scotsman by Jeremy Seal. It runs an extensive range of luxury tours from Ap-Oct, when the days are long. The train trip was as leisurely as it was luxurious; the twin cabins have two fixed lower-berth single beds, dressing table, wardrobe, heating, fans, opening windows, shower, washbasin and toilet.

Restaurant on Royal Scotsman.

The dining was as rich in the best Scottish produce, the culinary mir­acles executive chef Marc Tamburrini and his team conjured from their tiny galley: Isle of Gigha halibut, Pentland lamb, Uist crab and Shetland lobster. So it was that Royal Scotsman, with its 10 el­eg­antly refitted 1960s Pullman carriages, travels in the day, pas­sing the night in quiet sidings at towns and cities like Keith or Dundee.

We joined our fellow guests at Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel where the iconic tower clock still ensures pass­en­g­ers don’t miss their trains at the adjacent Waverley Station. A short walk to platform 2 was where Royal Scotsman, in handsome maroon livery with gold lettering, awaited us. A piper in full Highland kit: bagpipes, kilt, plaid cloak, bonnet and sporran, drew a crowd as he plays us aboard.

Guests were piped aboard the Royal Scotsman in Edinburgh.

The Observation Car was decked out with sofas, tartan throws and side tables topped with chessboards and lamps, like an elegant drawing room. Travellers enjoyed views of lochs and rivers, and moors clad in yellow gorse beneath the snow-capped peaks of the Cairngorms range. Host Mark Nash introduced himself over Champagne and strawberries from nearby Arbroath. Then canapes.

As the train left Edinburgh, we chatted, window-watched or went to the open Observat­ion Car for fresh air. We crossed the iconic Forth Bridge, once the world’s longest single-span bridge, be­fore fields of yellow rape and golf links stretched to the east coast’s golden beaches. Villages of grey granite clustered atop rocky outcrops.

North of Aberdeen, in light fading, we made for the dining cars where the guests, mostly from Europe and the US, continued their mixing over Scottish salmon served with a Salt River sauvignon blanc from South Africa followed by Gressingham duck. It was a terrific dinner, followed by a rousing set from a visiting folk duo who played music in the Ob­servation Car. There were accompanying whisky drinks at Keith from the Strathisla Distillery, home of Chivas Regal.

It was no accident that Royal Scotsman’s crew included a ded­ic­at­ed whisky ambassador who introduced us to the ext­en­s­ive selection of blends and single malts. The whiskey hostess made it her business to bring a sample bottle from whatever dist­illery we were passing.

romantic Ballin­dalloch Cast­le
Historic Houses  

No surprise that there should be takers for the pre-breakfast walk each morning eg a walk around Keith or over the bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh to Skye on the west coast.

Excursions punctuated the tour, giving insights into Scottish High­lands life. There was a guided walk along the Gar­ve River banks, and an C18th droving route with High­land historian Andrew McKenzie in per­iod droving dress. There were visits to romantic Ballin­dalloch Cast­le, and to Glamis, with its strong connections to the British monar­chy. At the Rothiemurchus Estate we did fly fish­ing and clay pigeon shooting. At Pitlochry’s Blair Athol distill­ery, people loved the taste of a 23-year single malt. And at the lovely gardens at At­tadale on Loch Carr­on, Joanna Macpherson showed off the fernery, Japanese gard­en, stands of subtropical rhododend­ron and lichen-clad birch woods. The Scottish Highlands can be tree­less and bleak, or green and verd­ant, a reminder of this country’s magnificently varied scenery.

Great views

Bazaar

Then it was back on-board to Dundee where some had booked massages in Royal Scotsman’s Dior Spa treatment rooms. The last evening was a gala dinner, and many of us entered into the occasion, with women in kilted skirts, men in full Highland dress. After feasting, Mark announced there were some traditional Scottish dance moves to learn. He showed us, to the accompaniment of accordion and fiddle. Guests and staff joined in, performing the Flying Scotsman and the Virginia Reel. A late-night ceilidh broke out on Dundee Station’s platform 4, a rousing finale to what had proved an exceptional experience.

Belmond’s Royal Scotsman offers tours ranging from 2-7 nights. New for 2023 are themed options, including A Taste of Scotland with Mich­elin-starred Edinburgh chef Tom Kitchin. The four-night Scotland’s Classic Splendours journey is expensive - check the 2023 prices.

A warm thank you to Jeremy Seal. 

First woman to bicycle around the world? Annie Kopchovsky Londonderry

Annie Kopchovsky, 1894

Her bloomers were soon adopted by most female cyclists

Credit: We Love Cycling

Annie Cohen (1870-1947) was born in Riga Latvia to Leib and Basha Cohen. Her entire family moved to the USA in 1875, settling in Boston. In 1887, her father died first and then her mother. Her older sister Sarah was already married, leaving teens Annie and her brother Bennett to take care of their younger siblings.

In 1888 adolescent Annie Cohen married Simon Kopchovsky, a ped­d­ler. They had three children in the next four years: Bertha Malkie, Libbie and Simon. Her brother Bennett married, and they had two child­ren. Simon was a devout Orthodox Jew who studied.. while Annie sold advertising space for daily Boston newspapers.

In 1894 two Boston business men bet that no woman could beat the record for cycling around the world; probably the two Boston men were savvy marketing staff from Columbia Bicycles. In any case the first man to do it, Thomas Stevens, had set the record (32 months) 10 years earl­ier. If any woman succeeded in the challenge, she’d win $10,000. 

Annie had two brief cycling lessons in the days before the chall­enge, and was given a women’s Columbia safety cycle. In June 1894, she stood before a crowd of 500 vocal support­ers in Boston Mass, to circumnavigate the world on a bicycle. That a woman was leaving her husb­and and 3 children to fend for themselves, while she took off around the world on a bike ALONE, was a radical feat then.

Before departing she needed money to get on her way; she set off with only a change of clothes and a pearl-handled rev­ol­ver. Annie had arranged for the spring water company Londonderry Lithia to sponsor her, handing over $100 in front of the crowd in exchange for an advertising plaque on her cycle – and the require­ment that she change her name, thus Annie Londonderry was born! She made money through advertising, with influence from Colonel Albert Pope, who owned the Sterling Bicycles Company that made the Columbia bike she first set off on. Annie attached posters and banners to her bicycle to advertise various companies.

The first part of Annie’s journey, cycling across the USA, proved to be more of a challenge than she had expected. In fact she came very close to giving up when she reached Chicago. Her women’s bicycle was desperately heavy and cycling in the full-skirted dress of the time was restrictive and exhausting. At this stage of her journey Annie made two very wise decisions: 1] losing the skirt and petticoats in favour of bloom­ers and 2] ditching the woman’s bike for a considerably lighter men’s one.

Clearly clothing was important. She made the move from skirts to bloomers to a man’s suit during the course of her journey, slow­ly becoming more of an affront to those who thought the sight of a woman cycling was uncouth. Furthermore, many people feared that wom­en straddling a moving saddle would lead to arousal.

Londonderry Lithia Water ad, 1906
flickr.com

She visited Chicago, New York, Paris, Marseilles, Alexandria, Jer­usalem and Yemen, across to Colombo, Singapore, Sai­g­on, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Japan. She coll­ect­ed signatures from the Amer­ican consuls in each place she passed through to prove she had been there. She also sold signed photos and gave lectures for a fee!

Annie loved creating stories for the press. She variously told them she was an orphan, wealthy heiress, medical student or a law student, and told stories about her jour­ney which were full of danger! But her stories, however fabricated, sold and helped to raise Annie’s celebrity.

There were also questions about how much of her journey she was ac­t­ually on her bike; she certainly completed some stretches on boats and trains! But she did a con­siderable amount of cycling, even riding on, after an accident where she broke her wrist or when the bike had a puncture.

Map of Annie’s travels
by her great-grandnephew Peter Zheutlin

In March 1895 she returned to America, landing in San Franc­isco. She cycled her way home, finally arriving triumphantly in Boston in Sept, almost 15 months to the day after leaving. Annie moved with her family to New York, where for months she wrote up her ad­ventures for the New York World, in a column called The New Woman. “I am a journal­ist and a new woman, if that term means that I believe I can do anything that any man can do.”

Annie Kopchovsky returned to full time family life and died in 1947.

Conclusion
Until 1894, there had been no female sport stars, no product en­dorse­ments and no young mothers reinventing themselves on wheels.  So Annie Kopchovsky became famous for having cycled around the world between 1894-5, on a trip that was presumably conceived as a vehicle for Annie’s own self-promotion and for advent­ure. She was an incredible woman who used a bicycle as a vehicle by which to make a statement to the world about what women are capable of. Her trip overlapped with an explosion of interest in bicycling and there was a special connection with the Women’s Movement. The bicycle offered women freedom and independence.

See Around The World On Two Wheels by Peter Zheutlin; Adventure Journal and Chasing Annie.

Czech town of Zlin - Bata shoes, UK Garden City town planning and Le Corbusier

Map of Czech Republic,

note Zlin near the eastern border with Slovakia

Press to expand

The small town of Zlín in SE Moravia dates back to the late C14th. More recently industries app­eared in the mid-C19th. The town's connect­ion with the wider world st­arted to improve with the opening of a post of­f­ice in 1848. Castle owner Baron Claud­ius Bret­ton opened a match fact­ory in 1850, and in 1870 Rob­ert Florimont’s shoe fact­ory followed. But both business­es closed and Zlín remained small. Happily the telegraph opened in 1886, a new school opened in 1897 and the new rail­way was built in 1899.

When Tomáš Bata (1876–1932) entered the shoe business in 1894, most of the pro­duction was done by local workers from home. So Bata built a fac­tory beside the railway station! When facing fin­ancial worries, To­máš decided to sew shoes from canvas not leather, growing the company to 50 work­ers. Then Bata installed its first steam-driven machines!

In 1906 Bata built a new factory and soon began building houses for their factory employees, not quite as elegant as Villa of Tomáš Bata (1911) which was designed by Czech archit­ect Prof Jan Kotěra. After WW2 the Villa was re­turned to Tomáš Bata II, Tomas I’s son. The build­ing later hous­ed the headquarters of the Worldwide Bata organisation.

 Villa of Tomáš Bata, built 1911

WW1 brought big orders from the Austro-Hungarian Empire for boots, and the number of workers greatly increased.

Post-WW1, Bata wanted to dev­elop a city that matched his work phil­os­ophy. He was a busin­ess­man with a strong social conscience, keen to em­p­loy more people and to con­struct workers’ housing facil­it­ies.

Sadly he died in a plane crash in 1932 while leaving on a business trip in a fog. Then his half-brother Jan Antonín Bata (1898–1965) took ownership of the companies.

The town’s popul­at­ion grew from 3,000 (1894) to 43,000 (1938) and 75,000 (2018). So An­t­onín Bata gave Zlín a more domin­ant administ­rat­ive Buil­d­ing 21, des­ig­ned by Karfík. The 16 storeys were called Czech­oslovakia’s 1st sky scr­aper with a sp­ec­ial feature: Jan had his office built inside a fully equipped lift so that he could move up-and-down to manage his 100,000+ employees. Even abroad, when a Bata factory was built in East Tilbury London,  Gahura and Karfik designed the modernist architecture.

Bata's UK factory, East Tilbury.

by architects Gahura and Karfik,
opened 1933.

The industrial buildings Bata #14 and #15 were converted into a modern cultural centre: Regional Gallery of Fine Arts, Museum of S.E Moravia and František Bartoš Regional Library. The Regional Gall­ery of Fine Arts featured architecture and artists from pre-WW2 eg Alfons Mucha.

The industrial building Bata #14, Museum of S.E Moravia
Now a modern cultural centre:

The best feature of the city was a mixture of two urban ut­op­ian visions: a] Ebenezer Howard's Garden City Move­ment in UK in 1903 and b] Le Corbusier's Fren­ch vision of urb­an modern­ity. There were separate factory zones, residential areas, public building zones and areas of op­en space!

The factory zones, residential areas and public building zones were separated

Bata wanted housing surrounded by gard­ens for married staff. Zlin was like so many new towns developed by humanist industrialists: its development was to make the employees happier and healthier workers. As in British company towns eg Port Sunlight! Bata was ma­k­ing the new housing blocks  generous and surrounded by gardens. Wages were also gener­ous, and in the 1930s the working week was short­er than in UK industries. There was welfare sup­port and educat­ion was encouraged.

Houses for married workers

each surrounded by gardens

On visiting Zlín in 1935, Le Cor­busier was asked to design the new hous­es. Zlín’s plan, designed in Le Corb­us­ier’s Par­is atelier, ab­an­d­oned the cen­tr­al­ised city mod­el for the lin­ear city for­mat. Zlin’s model for modern architecture was a 6.15 m ferro-concrete cube, infilled with steel, red bricks, rein­for­c­ed concrete and glass. The sim­pl­e model was used by Bata's architects, Frantisek Gahura (1896-1958) & Vladimír Karfik (1901-96), for ALL industrial buildings, shops, schools, hospitals, hotel and hos­tels for unmarried work­ers.

Bata’s Hospital was first founded in 1927. The orig­inal ar­chitect­ure was designed by Gahura, to commem­or­ate Bata’s ach­ieve­­ments. As was the Monument of Tomáš Bata 1933. Grand Cinema was built in 1932, becoming the largest cinema in Europe (2580 seats). It also boasted the largest movie screen in Europe, des­igned by Czech architects Miro­slav Lor­enc (1896-1943) and Gahura. Zlín’s Bata Co. helped found the Mod­ern Art Gallery, created in 1936 from works of art pur­chased in contemporary Czech art shows. In Building #14 of the Zlín fac­tory, art sa­l­ons were held annually until 1948. Thus the expansion of Bata Co. was rel­at­ed to Zlin’s cultural activities.

 Grand Cinema, 1932

After the communists came to power post-WW2, the plant was taken and the link with the Batas ended. In the 1980s Zlin was renamed Gottwaldov, honouring Czechoslovakian Soc­ialist Republic Pres. Kl­ement Gottwald, 1948-53. From the post-war era, a road was cut via the Bata's villa gar­den, used as a green link between the house and factories. Then, on the slopes above the villa, a new high rise housing estate was built with a dramatic curved block.

There have been some big changes post-1989 when Bata's legacy was restored to pol­it­ical favour. Car show­rooms, shopping strips and fast food outlets were built on the city edge. Then close to the town cen­tre, between the factory area and the newer housing, a shopping mall was added. Zlin is now an entrepreneurial town.

Since 2001 Tomáš Bata University has offered st­udents degree pro­gram­mes in the hum­anities, arts, econ­omics, tech­nol­ogy, man­ag­e­ment and nat­ur­al sciences. TBU has gr­own to become a pro­­m­in­ent res­ear­ch centre in the Cz­ech Rep­ub­lic and abroad. With a student popul­ation of 13,500, TBU dev­el­oped strong res­earch & devel­op­­ment par­t­nership with instit­ut­ions all over the world, both within the Euro­p­ean Union and in Canada, India, U.S, Russia, Jap­an & China. Bata shoes are no lon­g­er made in Zlín but are made abroad.

Tomáš Bata University
opened 2001