The Metropolitan Museum in New York is devoting an exhibition to female fashion designers, going beyond clichés and highlighting figures who have remained in the shadows.
Symbol of this exhibition entitled “Women Dressing Women”, which runs until March 3 in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum, a cotton muslin dress decorated with silk and taffeta roses. This is the piece that allows us to rediscover Ann Lowe (1898-1981), a pioneer among African-American designers, but largely ignored in her time. The designer’s creations were worn by the richest and most powerful families in the United States: Rockefeller, Roosevelt, Bouvier… At the Met, it is Ann Lowe’s most famous piece which sits majestically, the wedding dress by Jackie Kennedy (1953).
Three decades earlier, a now forgotten French house, Premet, launched the “La Garçonne” dress designed by “Madame Charlotte”, “whose success preceded that of (Gabrielle) Chanel by three years” at the head of the same house. name, underlines the museum. The little black dress with the white collar is one of the 80 outfits created by 70 designers, iconic or little-known, in the Met exhibition. The fashion branch of the prestigious New York museum, The Costume Institute, revisits the art of women’s clothing from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day and the environmental defense messages of designers like Gabriela Hearst or Hillary Taymour .
“Show the incredible diversity of female creators”
“The most important thing is to show the incredible diversity of women designers throughout history who have made all these major contributions to fashion,” says Mellissa Huber, associate curator at the Costume Institute. “We aim to dispel stereotypes according to which women are more “practical” than men or that they create with themselves in mind,” to the detriment of creativity, she adds.
For women, the story begins in the anonymity of sewing workshops, where they are often relegated. But several French designers established themselves at the beginning of the 20th century, such as Madeleine Vionnet, Jeanne Lanvin and Gabrielle Chanel. The interwar period in France even saw the number of women designers exceed that of men in fashion, the exhibition highlights.
We aim to dispel stereotypes
To present outfits designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, Nina Ricci and Vivienne Westwood, the Met’s Costume Institute delved into its collections, 33,000 pieces representing seven centuries of clothing. The exhibition, initially planned for 2020, as part of the celebrations around 100 years of women’s suffrage in the United States, was delayed by the pandemic.
“Women Dressing Women” ends on a more political note, looking at “absences” or “omissions” in “museum collections and fashion canons”. A question posed by this dress celebrating large sizes, by French designer Ester Manas. The Costume Institute’s impressive collection will be further highlighted during the museum’s next major fashion exhibition in spring 2024, where it intends to awaken “its sleeping beauties”, that is to say its rarest and most fragile pieces. An anticipated event, because it coincides with a prestigious annual event, the Met Gala, the famous philanthropic evening where the stars crowd in extravagant outfits.
2024-01-08 04:00:00
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