The Shophound

Dueling Fashion Exhibitions: Models Uptown VS. Isabel Toledo Downtown

New York has something of an embarrassment of riches when it comes to fashion museums with a continuing roster exhibits not only from The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but also The Museum at FIT as well as occasional shows from the likes of the Museum of the City of New York and others. We are currently graced with two major shows including the Met's "The Model As Muse" extravaganza and FIT's "Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out". The two shows are so different that it is almost pointless to compare them, except that one succeeds admirably, and the other sadly disappoints.
Isabel Toledo's profile has risen dramatically since Michelle Obama chose the designer's now famous lemongrass wool lace ensemble to wear at her husband's inauguration in January. Curators Valerie Steele and Patricia Mears get that famous outfit out of the way quickly, showcasing it alone in the exhibit's anteroom. Famous as it is, it is not Toledo's most interesting work, although photos showing its creation reveal that the original design was slightly more elaborate.
The show really starts in the museum's cavernous main room. While she has been well known to the public for only a few months, the designer has been admired by fashion insiders since her first show in 1985, and this presentation focuses on her rigorous design philosophy and innovative techniques, not unlike FIT's previous shows on Madame Grès and Ralph Rucci.
Most examples are accompanied by abstract flat sketches of the garments' patterns, illuminating Toledo's ingenious cutting methods. For all the focus on the technical details of dressmaking, the show could run the risk of becoming a dry academic exercise if it weren't for the gorgeous clothes. Toledo's style runs the gamut from puritanical to erotic (sometimes within the same outfit), and her wit and humor comes through in the mysterious alchemy that great designers work with their creations.
Her inventive hand with materials and sculpting garments puts her on a par with Rucci and Azzedine Alaïa, another Obama favorite. The show almost skips over Toledo's brief but promising tenure as the designer for a revived but aborted Anne Klein Collection (the accompanying catalogue goes into greater detail) except for a painstakingly tailored coat in pink wool and a series of silk pongee "Broomstick Librarian" dresses handpainted by the designer's husband and collaborator, Reuben. He also provides a 500 foot paper frieze filled with his inimitable drawings and paintings of his wife's work circling above the exhibition spaces.
It's their collaboration that is at the heart of the show –another strong and thoughtful showing from the team at FIT
And now uptown to the Met.

More about the Costume Institute after the jump as well as videos about both shows from The Met and New York Magazine.

Window Report: Bergdorf Goodman Salutes The Met's Model Muses

If you couldn't make it to last night's Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can at least stop by Fifth Avenue to catch a view of Bergdorf Goodman's latest set of windows. This week, they are inspired by the Met's new exhibit, The Model As Muse, and feature clever recreations of famous fashion photographs. There's a nod to Cecil Beaton's deco ballgowns, a mod moment with Twiggy by Bert Stern, Peter Lindbergh's troop of Chanel clad Supermodel biker chicks, and even a recreation of Richard Avedon's iconic "Dovima With Elephants" using a pair of giraffes as stand-ins. We particularly liked the mirror effect created by Steven Meisel's famous shot of a peroxided Linda Evangelista for a Dolce & Gabbana advertisement (though the actual dress in the window is by someone else!).
The windows were just being finished as we write this, so you probably have couple of weeks to see them, and the Costume Institute exhibit runs until August 9th.
As for the Party of the Year, we're still waiting on the pictures from Style.com, but Cathy Horyn's blog for the Times tells us of a last minute kerfuffle with a miffed Azzedine Alaïa, who created several dresses for models to wear to the party, but was not invited himself! As a result Alaïa muses and devotées Naomi Campbell and Stephanie Seymour say they're boycotting the party, which leaves the ranks of actual Supermodels a little thin.
Really, if RuPaul isn't there, then what's the point anyway?
Alaïa Pulls His Dresses From the Met Gala (On The Runway)

Click images for a larger view in a new window.

Fashion Exhibitions: Valentina Returns To The Spotlight

We don't often get to the Museum Of The City Of New York, (in fact we had never been there before) but a gloomy Thursday seemed to be a good opportunity to see Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity, an exhibition devoted to one of the most famous designers of the mid 20th Century who, to younger generations, seemed lost to the obscurity of the past. Valentina left no great house or collection of licensed products to be carried on. When she closed her haute couture business in the late 1950s, her label was never to be applied to another product, even though she herself would live until 1989, but that was not unusual. She didn't think of her name as a brand to be preserved and exploited. It was her signature, to be retired along with herself, when she saw fit.
Much of what is shown is taken from Valentina's own wardrobe. Her own best model, she was photographed for magazines as often as if she had been a movie star herself, and was given to droll pronouncements that made for good copy ("Mink is for football games" said the sable devotée). She was famous enough in her heyday to be interviewed on television by Edward R. Murrow, an excerpt of which is included in the show. The exhibition shows how much has and hasn't changed about fashion in America. Though she never had the kind of multi-million dollar brand business that we are used to seeing today, celebrity and personal connections had just as much to do with her success and fame as it would now, even though the contexts have changed. Valentina was most infamous for the intimate relationship that she and her husband, theater producer George Schlee, had with the then reclusive Greta Garbo, the nature of which sparked endless speculation. This only increased after George's death, when the designer and the star seemed to have a falling out, adding to both of their mystiques, though by that time, Valentina had long since retired.
Fashion was a smaller industry then, and Valentina was exclusive, often rejecting potential customers who fell short of her standards. She could afford it, since her clients included luminaries of the stage and screen like Lynn Fontanne and Katharine Hepburn among many others for whom she often created performance costumes, much like Halston did a generation later. The show deftly demonstrates how both aesthetically and culturally, Valentina was his forbear if you trade Garbo for Liza Minnelli and Liz Taylor. She set the template for his success as well as that of designers like Donna Karan or Carolina Herrera, combining exacting technical innovation with a glittery public face. It's easy to see the appeal of her soft, light tailoring, usually devoid of elaborate embellishment that would draw attention from a famous wearer. The clean lines of what is displayed still looks modern and contemporary.
The Museum Of The City Of New York is a little out of the way at 103^rd Street and Fifth Avenue, but it's well worth a visit to see how fashion has evolved and yet remains exactly the same.
Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity at the Museum Of The City Of New York through May 17^th at 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103^rd Street, Upper East Side

Costume Exhibition Du Jour:FIT Pours On The Seduction

If you haven't made it down to The Museum at FIT to see its outstanding exhibition, Gothic: Dark Glamour, then we strongly suggest you hurry on down there since it closes on February 21^st. While you are there, be sure to stop into the museum's Fashion and
Textile History Gallery on the street level for Seduction: 250 Years of Sexuality in Fashion, a survey of what constituted alluring apparel over the last two and a half centuries.
While our contemporary culture has no shortage of sexy clothes and the people who wear them (hello, Pussycat Dolls), it's always interesting to see how in times past the hint of a waistline, fabric softly draped over the bosom and a slightly low cut shoe equated major flirtation.
The show is pulled entirely from FIT's treasure trove of an archives, and runs until June 16^th which coincidentally is the day the museum's Isabel Toledo retrospective is scheduled to open.
Like all FIT's exhibitions, Seduction is free of charge, no small consideration these days.
Seduction: 250 Years of Sexuality in Fashion through June 16^th 2009 at The Museum at FIT Seventh Avenue at 27^th Street, closed Sundays & Mondays

Fashion Exhibition News:The Costume Institute FocusesOn Models For 2009

Time to pull out those Christy Turlington mannequins.
The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken a crowd-pleasing turn in its choice of subjects lately (Superheroes anyone?), and next year's centerpiece promises to follow that pattern. Instead of focusing on clothes, next year's summer exhibition will be a tribute to those who show them off, the Models.
Some may forget that well before the Supermodel Era of the '80s and '90s there were still a few models at any given moment who transcended their medium and became celebrities in their own right like Twiggy, Veruschka (pictured right), Cheryl Tiegs and Iman.
"The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion," will run from May 6th through October 9th and will feature 70 looks as well as an abundance of photography and probably more video than any exhibit at the Met has ever used (If they leave out George Michael's video for Freedom '90, they lose all credibility).
Harold Koda, curator in charge of The Costume Institute tells WWD, "In every period, high fashion is presented and made desirable by a handful of models who capture in their beauty the ideals of the day. ...There are certain images in every era which tend to fix an aesthetic ideal in the popular imagination. In its own time, it has the possibility of motivating a trend, but after that, it becomes our idea of that period, like Dovima and the elephant, or the famous [Richard] Avedon photograph of Suzy Parker in Chanel."
Turlington was such an iconic presence during her heyday (which seems to have no end) that the Costume Institute exclusively commissioned a set of the aforementioned mannequins based on her face. Expect to see those featured prominently in the show.
Marc Jacobs will be underwriting the show and will be the honorary chair for the Gala on May 4th along with Anna Wintour and Vogue, Justin Timberlake, and that ultimate model muse, Kate Moss. It practically goes without saying that this party will be a Supermodel extravaganza the likes of which nobody has seen since the mid '90s.
Where do we sign up?
The Costume Institute Looks at the Model as Muse (WWD)
And as an extra bonus:
That George Michael video featuring Linda, Cindy, Christy, Naomi at the peak of their fame courtesy of the newly launched MTV Music website

George Michael |MTV Music

Oh, and here's "Too Funky" with Nadja and Tyra in a Thierry Mugler runway show featuring at least two outfits from the recent "Superheroes" exhibit.

George Michael |MTV Music

Time Wasting News:The Met's Costume InstituteGoes Online

In a move sure to excite scholars and vintage clothing afficionados alike, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put its entire collection online in an extensive database available to the public.
In a project begun in 2000, 29,432 objects from the 31,000-piece collection have been digitally cataloged for your perusal, so if you feel like browsing Yves Saint Laurent ensembles from 1976-77 like those at left, they are there for you to examine.
It's not exactly the same as wandering through the Costume Institute's extensive storage rooms (which we have actually done) but it's fascinating nonetheless.
The Institute's recent “blog.mode: addressing fashion” exhibition showed the curators that they had a substantial online audience around the world, so as a part of a routine redocumentation of the entire collection, the updated information was put online in keeping with the entire museum's goal to have all of it's holdings digitally documented and available to the public.
The information will be updated periodically as it is an ongoing process, but that's the curator's job. All you have to do is log on and surf through the decades of fashion.
Want to see their entire collection of Galanos or Stephen Sprouse or Mary McFadden? It's only a click away.
Costume Institute Database Goes Online (WWD)
The Costume Institute Collection Database (MetMuseum.org)

Costume Exhibition Du Jour ReduxCintra Wilson Delves Into Goth

À propos of FIT's latest exhibition,"Gothic: Dark Glamour", leading Critical Shopper Cintra Wilson stays out of the shops and hits the Facebook to chat with today's Goth teens in today's Thursday Styles.
She also talks with the exhibition's curator, Valerie Steele, who adds historical context, but the most interesting aspect of the article is La Cintra's disclosure that she was once a Goth girl herself (no, that's not her in the picture).

Secretly I nursed grandiose ideas that my funereal vintage attire aligned me with beatniks, existentialists, Zen Buddhists, French Situationists, 1930s movie stars and samurai. (In reality, my style could probably have been more aptly described as “Biker Madonna with mood disorder.”)

Actually, Goth is not so far removed from Wilson's current chic, sleek femme fatale style, so it's not much of a surprise. In fact, we bet she made quite the alluring little Bay Area Vampirella at the dawn of the '90s.
And, see, she turned out OK.
You Just Can't Kill It by Cintra Wilson (NYTimes)
Previously, Costume Exhibition Du Jour: FIT Goes To The Dark Side With A Gothic Show

Costume Exhibition Du Jour:FIT Goes To The Dark SideWith A Gothic Show

It's always tempting to compare the city's two great fashion exhibitors, The Museum at FIT and The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lately, it seems to us that FIT is winning on the creative front. While the Met has the Party Of The Year that attracts showbiz glamor, FIT has been offering the more unusual as well as scholarly shows. This Summer, the Met offered up a Superhero themed show which nobody was anticipating more than we were. It was slick and entertaining, but turned out to have less depth than "Iron Man", not to mention "The Dark Knight". It's not that we were expecting deep revelations but the Costume Institute looked like it was really on cruise control for that one, and missed a lot of creative opportunities.
Downtown, it's FIT's turn, opening "Gothic: Dark Glamour" earlier this month.
If you think that this exhibition is about the way that grim, disaffected teenagers with nose rings dress, you are only partially right. Curator Valerie Steele traces the origin of the Gothic aesthetic back through the centuries and reminds us that it was popularized by the death-obsessed Victorians who made jewelry out of human hair and bird claws and had a strict code regarding what colors a widow could wear at which stage of mourning. Creepy, yes, but morbidly fascinating, especially since the antique mementi mori are vastly creepier than the contemporary gems from Chrome Hearts and others in Gothic style.
FIT has an exceptional show space which Steele and exhibition designer Charles B. Froom make full use of here. The dramatic mise en scène shifts from a ruined castle here and a haunted house there. One corner evokes a horror film and another cased section has spotlights that dim periodically causing the glass panels to turn to mirrors, dramatically obscuring their contents. It's a brilliant design, but fun and macabre, as if Tim Burton had designed a museum.
While the Costume Institute has tended to stick to the famous names of fashion in creating "all-star" exhibitions, Steele is not afraid to draw upon obscure foreign designers to illustrate her thesis, and in this show she even includes inexpensive clubwear labels like Lip Service and other designers unknown to all but those who like to dress up as a vampire on Saturday night, and there's even one movie costume, one of Eiko Ishioka's designs for "Dracula". There's no shortage of couture here, though, and featured designers include the obvious choices like Alexander McQueen and Givenchy's Ricardo Tisci as well as a host of other less likely names like Yeohlee and Balenciaga (the original one) that show how much the Gothic aesthetic has quietly pervaded the mainstream. The tattered edges of "deconstructed" fashion can also be interpreted as Gothic decay, and the classic little black dress can be traced back to the classic femme fatale or sexy, young widow.
Most importantly, Steele sets the Gothic aesthetic in a relevant social and cultural context, illuminating how, through the decades, many people have celebrated life by obsessing over death and its imagery. You may wonder a bit less why so many young women seem to idolize Morticia Addams. All this comes with a rare sense of showmanship recalling FIT's blockbuster shows of the 1980s like "Fashion and Surrealism".
Best of all, as of we need to remind you, it's free free free, and just in time for Halloween.
"Gothic: Dark Glamour" The Museum at FIT, Seventh Avenue at 27th Street through February 21, 2009.

Arbiters Of Style:FIT Focuses On Fashion Authorities

While the Costume Institute is reveling in Superhero fantasy uptown at the Met, The Museum at FIT has taken a more down to Earth approach with Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion, the exhibition it opened last week. Rather than spotlighting a particular designer or stylistic theme, the show pulls together items from FIT's extensive collection that came from women who influenced the course of fashion not only as designers, but also as editors, photographers, retail executives and even prominent muses.
It makes for a slightly less cohesive presentation, but in its favor, it may remind the public of s few prominent women from the past who would qualify today as what we call 'style icons'.
Is Gwen Stefani today's Irene Castle or Isabel Eberstadt? Will costume curators someday be looking at Tinsley Mortimer or Rachel Zoe as arbiters of taste? Only time will tell. It's hard to compare eras when the way fashion is now presented to the public has changed so much, but the show is an interesting reminder that the style images we consume ever more voraciously usually pass through several filters before they hit the street. It will tide us over nicely until the Fall when FIT unveils its Goth extravaganza.
Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion, through November 8^th at The Museum at FIT, Seventh Avenue at 27^th Street, Chelsea

Our Last Post On SUPERHEROES At The Costume Institute

Now that all the news about the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Ball has been thoroughly exhausted, perhaps it's time to see the actual exhibition related to the hoopla.
Superheroes: Fashion And Fantasy is kind if a big summer movie of a museum show in no small part because so many of the clothes in the show actually come from summer movies.
It is perhaps not the most scholarly of the Costume Institute's exhibitions. Compare it to the extensive and impressive Gustave Courbet exhibition upstairs with its novel's worth of accompanying text, and it looks ever more lightweight, but no less entertaining.
The movie costumes include two Spider-Men (classic and Symbiote black), Michelle Pfeiffer's shiny, sutured Catwoman, an Iron Man, Christopher Reeve's Superman and Clark Kent outfits, an armored Batman from next month's The Dark Knight, one of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman bustier bodysuits which has sadly faded to red, gold and purple and, possibly the most fascinating, Rebecca Romijn's Mystique "costume" from the X-Men films which consists of body paint and a few strategically placed appliqués of textured latex, confirming that she was almost entirely naked throughout the three movies (which somehow managed to be rated PG-13).
The rest of the show is comprised mostly from dramatic runway pieces that were supposed to be "inspired" by superhero garb, though Giorgio Armani, for example, has admitted that he had not a single thought in his head of Spider-Man when he created the cobweb dress that sits next to the wall-crawler in the "Graphic Body" section of the show. Many of the comparisons are more coincidental than deliberate, though John Galliano's Wonder Woman and Catwoman inspired outfits for Dior are clearly derived from comics, or at least the movies and TV.
Real comics fans probably won't find the show too satisfying, and if you think that comics geeks aren't into fashion, think again. Many are known to have encyclopedic knowledge of the various iterations of their favorite heroes' costumes over time. They will easily notice that the two famous Thierry Mugler cyber-babe costumes reflect the look of DC Comics' Cyborg character much more than the Iron Man costume they are associated with in the show. Aside from identifying the creators of the famous characters shown in the exhibition (which after countless lawsuits with Marvel and DC Comics is practically mandated by law) little mention is made of the artists who have designed and redesigned various superheroes' looks over the decades. In fact, a survey purely of Superhero design over the years might not be a bad idea itself.