What's on the December Fashion Exhibition Calendar

With the holiday season in full swing, stepping into a museum can bring a dose of beauty and grace into an otherwise busy schedule. Here are my top three picks of museum exhibitions for December 2013.

A Queer History of Fashion at FIT Museum in New York

A Queer History of Fashion, FIT Museum

This exhibition celebrates the influence of gay and lesbian designers on fashion and traces the origins of cross-dressing to its historical roots. This exhibit, co-curated by Valerie Steele and Fred Dennis, literally blew me away by its originality and the depth of research that underpinned its creation. Since I had expected a show that was contemporary in focus, I was surprised to learn that there is a 300 year history to consider, going back to the 18th century when cross-dressing “mollies,” foppish “macaronis,” and “men milliners” challenged gender roles. "This is about honoring the gay and lesbian designers of the past and present. By acknowledging their contributions to fashion, we want to encourage people to embrace diversity," said Dennis on the FIT Museum site. With an innovative presentation format that I had not seen in the FIT gallery before which moved the focus to the centre of the gallery away from the walls, the exhibit is also visually stunning. The show closes on January 4, 2013, but is also accessible through an exhibition website. 

Reflecting Fashion: Art and Fashion since Modernism

Wedding Dress 1967 by Christo at the Mumok, Vienna

The intersection of art and fashion is a topic that I never tire of, and the exhibition Reflecting Fashion at the Mumok in Vienna, Austria offers four floors of engaging examples that explore "clothing and fashion as an essential component of art".  The main themes of the exhibition include: Fashion as Modernism, Fashion as the eternal deputy of Surrealism, and From the Three-Piece Suit to the Deconstruction of Fashion.

Fashion, A-Z at The Museum at FIT

The Museum at FIT is one of my favourite fashion museums. With over 50,000 garments and accessories in their collection, Director and Chief Curator Valerie Steele and her talented staff have one of the largest collections in the world to draw on and they use this archive to come up with something fresh and innovative on a regular basis. 

Fashion, A-Z, Part II could have been a yawn, but it was not. Featuring highlights from their enormous collection, the full spectrum of design approaches and talents is presented in the upstairs history gallery.

Several of my favourite sculptural garments from their collection were on display, including: The Charles James Tree dress from 1955 in dusty rose that stands as the penultimate body sculpture (pictured above); The Martin Margiela sleeveless jacket from sprint 1997 that evokes a mannequin; and, a Madame Gres abstracted triangular black silk faille evening dress from 1967 that asserts angularity and a mod-1960s vibe. 

What I'm Reading ....

Summer is my time to read. I love to lay in the backyard on a chaise and catch up on my reading.... Hot off the press from Berg are two new titles that dovetail my research: Fashion and Art as well as Victorian Fashion Accessories.

In Fashion and Art, editors Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas have compiled a selection of essays by leading scholars including Valerie Steele, Hazel Clark, Joanne Eicher and Diana Crane on the intersection of fashion and art. To date, papers on the topic were difficult to find and this book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the discourse thereon. My initial review of this book indicates that Valerie Steele's essay on Fashion and Art in this book mirrors her comments in Milan as well as my interview with her for Fashion Projects. I am looking forward to digging deeper into these essays, especially since this is a topic that I am passionate about.

Report from Milan Fashion Tales 2012

Dolci is the word I would use to describe my trip to Milan Fashion Tales 2012. It was three days of intense focus on fashion theory and I took it all in like a sponge. Funnily enough, many people said to me "You look familiar" and when I'd admit that I was the author of "Fashion is my Muse!", they would often laugh and said they had visited before. It seems that my slog (scholarly weblog) is a fashion academic's guilty pleasure.....

The Duomo in Milan, Photo by Ingrid Mida 2012

The conference was kicked off by fashion scholar Valerie Steele who gave a talk entitled "Is Fashion Art?". She had given a similar paper last summer but revised this talk to incorporate the quote from Muccia Prada used in the Costume Institute's exhibit on Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prada said: “Dress designing is creative, but it is not an art…. But to be honest, whether fashion is art or whether even art is art doesn’t really interest me. Maybe nothing is art. Who cares!”

God Save my Shoes

The Bata Shoe Museum hosted a preview of God Save My Shoes, a documentary film about women's passionate and often obsessive relationship with shoes. The film features top shoe designers Christian Louboutin, Manolo Blahink,  and Bruno Frisoni, as well as women shoe lovers/collectors from New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Milan, including Dita von Teese and Fergie. Experts, including Dr. Valerie Steele, Director and Curator of the FIT Museum, and Elizabeth Semmelhack, Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum, give thought-provoking interviews on women's obsession with high heel shoes.

Meet me in Milan at Fashion Tales 2012

The competition was fierce (with over 200 submissions), but I got the call and I'm on the roster of speakers. I'll be presenting my paper at the Fashion Tales 2012 conference in Milan on The Metaphysics of Fashion Blogging. Blogging will be reconsidered in the context of historic precedents such as Barbara Johnson's album of her wardrobe selections from the 18th century and as well as in terms of theorists Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault as a tool of identity construction and conversational erudition. This international conference will be held at the Center for the Study of Fashion and Cultural Production of the Universita Cattolica and runs from June 7-9, 2012. Fashion gurus like Valerie Steele and Christopher Breward will be among the keynote speakers.  Shall we meet in Milan?

Details here.

Notice of copyright: 
All text and images on this blog are the copyright of Ingrid Mida, unless otherwise noted. The copying of posts, images and/or text without proper attribution is violation of copyright and legal action will be pursued.

A Conversation with Jeanne Beker about Fashion and Art

Jeanne Beker: AGO Collector's Series 2011

Jeanne Beker's personal art collection is whimsical, eclectic, and captivating - descriptors that can also be used for the woman herself. In a one-on-one interview with this fashion powerhouse, Jeanne and I had a lively conservation about fashion and art and she also gave me a tour of her favourite artworks now on display as part of the Art Gallery of Ontario's 2nd Annual Collector's Series Exhibition.

The Birthday Party by Marion Perlet

For Jeanne, each work of art in her collection evokes a memory. She said "They really serve as a kind of visual diary for me of my travels, certain stages I was going through in my life, of certain changing aesthetics I've had over the years." One of her favourites is an oil painting by Marion Perlet called "The Birthday Party" in which the artist painted her memories of her birthday party as a child. Jeanne said "This was a cherry pie but my girls always thought it looked like a pepperoni pizza. It sat right over our table in the kitchen of our old house and now it hangs in my dining room and it just makes me feel good. And yet, there is something about the look in their eyes, some of them look a little dysfunctional, or that they have their grudges or own stories to tell or their own feelings about themselves, their particular plight - they are your typical dysfunctional family I think."

A Conversation with Valerie Steele on Fashion and Art

Valerie Steele 2007 Photo by Aaron Corbett (Courtesy of Valerie Steele)

Dr. Valerie Steele is a renowned fashion scholar. She is the Director and Chief Curator of the Fashion Institute of Technology, editor of the journal Fashion Theory and has written numerous books including  The Corset: A Cultural History; Paris Fashion; Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now; Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power; and Women of Fashion: 20th-Century Designers. She has curated more than twenty exhibitions including the current exhibition at FIT called Daphne Guinness.

In August, I spoke with Valerie about the convergence of fashion and art as part of my series of interviews with curators on the topic. The transcript of that interview was published on Fashion Projects and can be found here.

Notice of copyright: 
All text and images on this blog are the copyright of Ingrid Mida, unless otherwise noted. The copying of posts, images and/or text without proper attribution is violation of copyright and legal action will be pursued.

It all started with Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette's Dress (Property of the Royal Ontario Museum)

Life is funny. If someone had told me that one day I'd be interviewing curators and that people in New York would be talking about a speech I'd given on the topic of Fashion and Art, I would have laughed at the improbability of it all. And yet, that is now my reality and it is all because of a dress.....

Back in 2008, I was new to blogging. All I knew at that point was that I wanted to write about fashion, art and books. It was a slow beginning. And then one day, I saw a dress at the Royal Ontario Museum that may have been worn by Marie Antoinette. It is probably the only such dress in existence and is believed to have survived because it was customary for royalty to give away their clothing after the season. The dress had been altered in the 19th century and was purchased by the ROM in 1925 by the ROM's first director, Charles Trick Currelly, from an antiques dealer in London, England.  I became obsessed with this dress and wanted to understand what it might have looked like before it was altered (actually I'm stilll obsessed with this dress and will soon begin to post about a creative project inspired by that dress).  I started reading everything I could about Marie Antoinette and 18th century dress and discovered a whole world of fashion scholarship that I had not even known existed. By immersing myself in the topic, I taught myself costume history. (The one thing I learned from my first master's degree was how to teach myself anything although I have since taken courses in costume history). And although fashion had been my muse in my art practice for several years before this juncture, I also began to make replicas of period dress in paper, in fabric and in mesh. I attended lectures and exhibitions about costumes and textiles. As I gained knowledge, I began to write about what I saw - at first for my blog, then for newsletters and then for journals and now for my masters of fashion thesis.

There was a time when I worked in finance that I had an unshakable confidence in what I was doing. They called me the Blonde Barracuda - probably because I was fearless in speaking my mind. But when I left that career to care for my sick little boy and tend to my dying father, my self confidence evaporated. It seemed that people no longer were interested in what I had to say because I was a stay at home mother.... And even after I forged a new career as a photographer and then as an artist, something still didn't fit. As much as I enjoyed the process of creation, I did not feel intellectually engaged or challenged as an artist and my days in the studio were too solitary. But what this immersion in art has done is helped me to understand the common visual vocabulary and processes shared by both art and fashion.

After attending the Costume Society of America mid-west conference last weekend, I feel like I have found my people... I speak the language of fashion academia and I'll be reshaping my speech into an article to submit for publication. Who knows maybe one day I'll actually be brave enough to actually talk to Hamish Bowles and Anna Wintour ....

P.S. I received permission from Valerie Steele and Harold Koda to publish the transcripts of our conversations on fashion and art on Fashion Projects.

When Does Fashion Become Art?

Alexander McQueen Jungle 1997-1998

This is the abstract for my Keynote Address at the Costume Society of America Mid-West Conference presented on October 14, 2011 at 4 pm at the University of Northern Iowa:

When Does Fashion Become Art?  by Ingrid Mida

Clothing can be a visual mirror of our inner selves. We each get dressed in the morning and make choices how to present ourselves to the world. We construct our identity with our choice of clothing and accessories and signal our belonging or not. This expression of identity through dress makes it a ready subject for artistic practices and interpretation and both artists and designers have considered notions of the body and identity as articulated through fashion. 

There has been much debate about whether fashion is art. Fashion scholars such as Sung Bok Kim, Sandra Miller, Anne Hollander and Elizabeth Wilson have considered the question. In my interviews with four museum directors/scholars, including Matthew Teitelbaum of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Nathalie Bondil of the MMFA, Valerie Steele of FIT and Harold Koda of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there was no consensus. This was not surprising given that fashion designers themselves do not agree on whether fashion is art.

It was an instinct – as a result of my work as an artist - that led me to frame the question in a different way. Instead of asking “Is fashion art” it seemed to make more sense to ask “When does fashion become art?” After all, both fashion and art require the translation of an idea into another form. Both disciplines share a visual vocabulary and process-oriented development. Both fashion and art also have commercial aspects driving their conception and both can include multiples in a series or collection.

But, not all fashion is art. What falls into the realm of fashion is just too broad for that statement to be true, especially when fashion can include both garments of haute couture and trendy mass-produced items.

Lessons from Isabel Toledo

Photo of Isabel Toledo by Ruven Afandor

In a world that often measures success by fame, I find it utterly refreshing to discover that Isabel Toledo walks her own path. She pursues her own goals, does not follow the trends, and does not show at Fashion Week. She does not consider herself an artist or designer, and prefers to describe herself as a "seamstress" since she loves "the technique of sewing more than anything else." How radical and how original!

Being in a reflective mood about my own work, I've taken to heart some of the lessons I learned from reading the book "Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out" by Valerie Steele and Patricia Mears.

1. Be true to yourself.
Unlike most fashion designers, Isabel Toledo does not sketch. She conceives of a garment in her mind and works to manipulate fabric to realize her vision. Her husband, Ruben Toledo, an artist and fashion illustrator, will sketch that vision for her based on her description and continues to sketch for her as the garment takes form.

The strikingly original clothing that comes from Isabel Toledo's studio does not follow trends. She once said "My inspiration this season was having no inspiration. I just worked and it came from the function. It's not as easy as having a concept".

Typically, fashion designers have to have a huge commercial enterprise to be considered successful. Isabel Toledo's small atelier of about twenty workers produce only about 300 finely crafted garments per season.

2. Acclaim is not a measure of success.
At various points in her career, Isabel Toledo has been heralded as "New York's best new designer" (New York Talk), "one of America's 7 rising stars of fashion" (Vogue), "most inventive designers of the under-30 generation" (NY Times). However, the Fall 1989 collection was dismissed by WWD as an "artsy horror show". Other collections have been described as "quirky" and "cultish". In her own words, Isabel says she prefers to fly "under the radar."


3. Setbacks are inevitable.
In 2005, Isabel Toledo was one of ten finalists for the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund award, but "to the shock of observers", Isabel lost and was not even chosen as a runner-up.

In 2006, it appeared that Isabel Toledo was on the cusp of financial security and success when she was hired as the new creative director of Anne Klein. In spite of rave reviews and strong sales for her debut collection in 2007, the changes in management at Jones Apparel Group resulted in the brand being discontinued and Isabel received a pink slip.

In spite of these public failures, "Toledo does not view herself as an unknown entity or an underdog." She continues to walk her own path, swimming against the tide of fashion.

4. Have a sense of humour.
Looking at the photograph of Isabel above and seeing some of the surrealist type of designs that Isabel Toledo has created over her career (including one fabulous hair clip with eyes to convey "eyes at at the back of one's head"), I would have to hazard a guess that Isabel has a sense of humour. This probably served her well in the many setbacks she faced, keeping her grounded and laughing at the absurdity of life!

Perhaps Glenda Bailey, editor-in-chief- of Harper's Bazaar, said it best:

"Isabel Toledo is a lover of order - who finds inspiration in anarchy. She is a mathematical genius - who makes it look like magic. She is a pragmatist - who creates the clothes that dreams are made of. Isabel's work is more than fashion and it's more than life. Perhaps that's because, to Isabel, art and fashion are life. And no one makes life look better."

The show "Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out" at the Fashion Institute of Technology closes on Saturday, September 26, 2009.

Book Review: Isabel Toledo, Fashion from the Inside Out

Title: Isabel Toledo, Fashion from the Inside Out
Authors: Valerie Steele and Patricia Mears
Publisher: Yale University Press in association with FIT (New York) 2009
Category: Non-fiction (Fashion)
Number of Pages: 250

Designer Isabel Toledo was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Museum at FIT this summer (June 17 through September 26, 2009). Having attended the exhibition a few weeks ago (during my blogging hiatus), I was blown away by the huge talent of this largely unheralded designer. Her sculptural fashion designs must be seen in person to be truly appreciated. Nevertheless, the high quality of the exhibition made me lust after the accompanying book.

Isabel Toledo, From the Inside Out, was co-written by Valerie Steele and Patricia Mears. Steele tells Toledo's story, from her Cuban roots through her ups and downs as a fashion designer to the triumphant day when Michelle Obama wore an Isabel Toledo ensemble to her husband's inauguration. In the second half of the book, Mears presents an analysis of the thematic designs in the exhibition including: Suspension, Liquid Architecture, Shadow, Shape, Manipulated Surfaces, and Organic Geometry.

Illustrated with exquisite photographs, this book is not just a pretty picture book. Both Steele and Mears write thoughtful, comprehensive and well-written analyses of Toledo and her work. I also gained a new appreciation for Isabel Toledo's designs. The integrity with which she approaches her designs, ignoring trends and the fashion cycle to instead embracing her own artistic vision, made me wish I had access to her clothing in Toronto. This is the kind of book that I'll look at and reread many times, especially when I'm short of inspiration.

P.S. If you can make it to the exhibition before it closes next weekend, you won't be disappointed!!

Isabel Toledo, Fashion from the Inside Out
June 17th - September 26th, 2009

The Museum at FIT
Seventh Avenue at 27th Street
New York City, 10001-5992
www.fitnyc.edu/museum
212-217-4558

Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out

Blossom Sleeve Bolero and Balloon Dress, Spring/summer 2005 by Isabel Toledo
Photo by Irving Solero

Half Moon Blossom into a Cornflower, Fall/Winter 1998 by Isabel Toledo
Photo by Irving Solero

The Fashion Institute of Technology is currently featuring a retrospective of the work of fashion designer Isabel Toledo (June 17-September 26, 2009). Curated by Valerie Steele, this exhibition called Fashion from the Inside Out includes 70 iconic looks from the mid 1980s to the present, including Michelle Obama's Inauguration Day Outfit.

Cuban-born designer Isabel Toledo works closely with her husband fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo and does not herself sketch. She says she is "not a fashion designer, but rather a seamstress" and construction and draping are the starting point in her designs. "I really love the technique of sewing more than anything else...the seamstress is the one who knows fashion from the inside! That's the art form really, not fashion design, but the technique of how it's done!"

The exhibition is organized into 7 sections including:
Organic Geometry
Shadow
Suspension
Liquid Architecture
Shape
Manipulated Surfaces
Origami

Admission is free to FIT but if you cannot make it to NYC, there is a comprehensive on-line exhibition.

Fashion Institute of Technology
Seventh Avenue at 27 Street
New York 1001