Fashion Fans
Retailers selling fashionable hand fans
A fashion fan is a hand-held fan carried to move air and to be seen doing it, one of the oldest accessories in continuous use and one of the few that is genuinely functional decoration. The retailer listed here is Mariposa Fans, by Hot Couture, the company Susan M. Lupien founded after taking Baileys from an unknown category to a million-case brand. Turning to accessories around the turn of the millennium, she read the moment as functionalism wrapped in romance and saw the fan's opening everywhere: spectators wilting at golf, polo and tennis matches, theater audiences, and dancers on club floors, all recycling napkins and programs into sources of a cooling breeze. She sourced where the skill and craft of shaping chic hand-held fans still existed, in luxurious European imports, and built the line with design director Chris Royer. The bridal fans page in the bridal folder is this category's wedding branch. Fans divide into folding fans, which open from shaped sticks and a fabric or paper leaf, fixed fans on a handle, and the small battery fans that are tools rather than fashion.
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Mariposa Fans
: Hot Couture is the brainchild of the marketer who brought
Baileys from an unknown category to a million case brand with a place
among the classic liqueurs. Now, Susan M. Lupien, President of Hot
Couture has turned her razor sharp insights towards another "hot
category," namely fashion accessories. Zeroing in on the turn of the
Millennium fascination with functionalism wrapped in romance, she took a
look at a fashion note that has been around for centuries and is just
the solution for bringing together today's frenetic pace and its longing
for a gentler, more romantic times. Enter the hand-held, handcrafted
fashion fan. Lupien saw the wilting spectators at golf, polo, and tennis
matches; theater audiences; and dancers on the club scene and observed
their furtive efforts to recycle napkins and programs into sources of a
cooling breeze. Familiar with the sourcing of luxurious European
imports, she boarded a jet and headed out to find where the skill and
craft of shaping chic hand-held fans still existed. She found them, and
set to work with her Design Director, Chris Royer.
- Fashion Fans
- Bridal Fans
You may want to also check the Fashion Accessory for Women on eBay.
You may have interest in also viewing the bridal fan retail section of our bridal fashion accessory area.
The Fan as an Accessory With a Language
Fans once carried a whole social vocabulary: histories of etiquette describe positions and movements said to signal everything from follow me to we are watched, and while the so-called language of the fan was embroidered by later writers, the fan genuinely was a standard part of formal dress for centuries across Europe and Asia, with regional forms from the Japanese sensu and ogi to the Spanish abanico. That depth is why fans keep returning to fashion: few accessories arrive with so much history built in.
For buyers, the practical division is between fans bought to use and fans bought to display. Working fans need strong sticks, a leaf that will survive thousands of openings, and a size matched to the hand. Display and costume fans can trade durability for decoration. The retailers here sell the working, carried kind, bridal and fashion alike.
Common Questions
What are fashion fans made of?
A folding fan has two parts: the sticks or ribs, of wood, bamboo, acrylic or lacquered materials, and the leaf, the fabric or paper mounted across them, in silk, lace, cotton or printed paper. The leaf carries the design, painted, printed, sequined or plain, and the sticks set the fan's weight and snap. Handcrafted fans, the Mariposa Fans end of the market, are shaped and mounted by hand, which shows in how evenly the fan opens and how quietly. Fixed fans are a single shaped piece on a handle, traditional in many cultures and sold as souvenirs and decor as well as for use.
When do people carry fashion fans today?
In heat, in crowds and on camera: outdoor events, summer ceremonies and festivals, theater and concert seats, dance floors, hot commutes, and destinations where air conditioning is not guaranteed. Fans are also carried as pure style, with evening dress, flamenco and historical costume, and as wedding and party favors. The fan's return rides practicality: it needs no battery, weighs nothing, works silently, and reads as elegant where a paper program reads as makeshift, which was the founding observation behind the line listed here.
How should a folding fan be cared for?
Open and close it gently along its fold lines, keep it dry, and store it closed in its sleeve or box so the leaf is not crushed or faded. Fabric leaves spot-clean; paper leaves are kept from water entirely. A fan that is forced open backwards or left open in sun deteriorates at the folds first, since the leaf's creases are its working parts. Treated as a small instrument rather than a toy, a handcrafted fan lasts for years of summers.