STORIES FOR GIRLS

A small exhibit at FIT takes on the magnificent subject Fairy Tale Fashion but falls flat. It makes literal, and often unconvincing, connections between clothing described in well-known western fairy tales and runway fashions. So there are, in the basement gallery, rows of mannequins dressed in Little Red Riding Hood capes, Cinderella ballgowns, Wicked Witch dresses, and Snow Queen suits. What could have been a vivid exploration of ages-old cultural archetypes (Witch, Slave, Princess, Mermaid) is simply an excuse to pull, and display, outfits from the Museum’s permanent collection.

The most powerful pieces weave fairy tale figures into fashionable, wearable clothing. There’s a Dolce and Gabbana hooded gold dress, smothered with jewels, that evokes Medieval Princess and Joan of Arc, without being historically pedantic. And there’s a white fur jacket and dress by J Mendel that evokes Sweet Russian Princess and Wicked Witch of the Tundra, simultaneously. Less interesting are pieces so high-concept they end up looking like costumes from an off-Broadway show: an outrageously overscaled red vinyl hood by Commes des Garcons, and a motorcycle jacket worn over a Swan Lake tutu by Undercover.

Two designers straddle the worlds of fairy tale and fashion with exceptional grace: Thierry Mugler and Thom Browne. A shimmering, fitted silver leather fishtail sheath by Mugler feels as if it were crafted for a brassy Jazz-Age Mermaid. And two stunning Thom Browne ensembles subvert their originary fairytale. A womens red wool skirt suite with elaborate floral piecework dresses Little Red Riding Hood with punk splendor. And a mens grey tweed suit with fraying hems is worn with a Big Bad Bear mask, exposing the animal appetites lurking within the perfect gentleman.

The bear suit is the only male clothing on display, which brings up an aspect of fairy tales left unexamined here. Where are all the boys: the Wizards, Wolves and Prince Charmings? Which is to wonder, whom do our fairy tales speak to, and what do they teach, about clothing and everything else? The most intriguing outfits on display here give the women who wear them a sexual and cultural authority that, most often, fairy tales deny.

Photograph courtesy of Getty images.

February 12, 2016 by Nalina Moses

ALL DOLLED UP

The Chanel Spring 2016 couture show was formally rigorous: a parade of 120 suits and gowns executed in muted gold tones with jewel-like embellishments. The outfits were unified in their quiet opulence, and in their allegiance to the classic Chanel silhouette: a slim bottom with a top cut away at the neck and the waist. The models sported identical low rolled buns, high curved-heel wedges, and Cleopatra eyeliner, a look that was part Dovima and part Princess Leia.

But the fashion was upstaged by the scenery. The show’s stated theme was ecology and it was presented inside the Gran Palais on a set with lawns, trees, a three-story wood cabana, and blank blue backdrops standing for cloudless sky. The cabana’s unadorned wood slat construction felt vaguely “ecological” and very, very modern. Its tidy construction sat in perfect contrast to the majestic arching steel ribs of the building above.

Models emerged from the cabana one by one and circled the lawn in a stoned robotic shuffle. The fringes, beading and brooches on their dresses bobbed like wings and antennae. Mica Arganaraz paraded solo, at the end, in a fitted bridal gown and hoodie encrusted with white beads. She skimmed the walkways, slowed by the the heavy train of the dress, like a swan.

For the finale all sixty models gathered inside the cabana as its front panels folded and flipped open, simultaneously, slowly, like so many suburban garage doors. The spectacular doll-house view revealed all the young women in their evening clothes, at once. As they searched the crowd blankly and accepted the applause they looked less like dolls, or like young women, than like the most exquisite, exotic animals.

Photo: Courtesy of Fashion to Max

February 07, 2016 by Nalina Moses

FREE TO BE YOU

In the days after David Bowie died, some recalled his accomplishments as a singer-songwriter, and many recalled his bold sense of style, his facile gender-fluidity, and his position as a heroic outsider. He’s a music icon but what captivates is his identity.

Bowie was fine-boned and fragile-looking, and possessed, in addition, an uncanny photographic intelligence. He knew fashion and makeup, but even more he knew his angles, and how to project a potent image for the camera. As a schoolboy it was his movement instructor who first identified his star quality, not his music teacher or choir master. As a performer he adopted a series of fictional identities, all convincing and also, somehow, deeply felt. Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke are remembered as real people, more so than any of Madonna’s fashion-savvy reincarnations or Lady Gaga’s self-obscuring personae.

Bowie himself remained, to the public, mostly unknown. As a follow up to his obituary the New York Times ran a pleasing, gossipy piece about how the pop star built an anonymous, bourgeois, (mostly) paparazzi-free life for himself and his family in an apartment building on a busy shopping street in SoHo. For formal events he put on a tuxedo and fixed his hair. At other times he walked his neighborhood alone, unshaven, wearing jeans, sneakers and baseball caps, (mostly) undetected. He bough fruit at the deli and magazines at the newsstand.

Years ago, on a summer afternoon, I saw Bruce Springsteen walking through Union Square. He was wearing an ankle-length black leather trenchcoat and motorcycle boots, and had his wife beside him and a scrum of bodyguards trailing six steps behind. He was a blue collar rock star playing Blue Collar Rock Star. Maybe this is why Bowie was so remarkable. He crafted a series of images for himself that were so indelible, so intoxicating, that they allowed his own self, unmoored, to move freely behind.

David Bowie, 1975, photograph by Steve Schapiro.

January 18, 2016 by Nalina Moses

SUITING ONESELF

A small show at the Met’s Costume Institute highlights the wardrobe of designer Jacqueline de Ribes. De Ribes is a French Countess and socialite whose natural beauty and elevated taste endeared her to the couturiers she has patronized over the decades, including Valentino, Yves St. Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. In the 1980′s she went on to form a couture house of her own.

The clothes she commissioned and the clothes she created are all of a piece: refined in proportion and structure, bold in color and detail. She tinkered with couture garments to suit her needs and her figure. She asked Yves St. Laurent to remake a shimmering fishscale-sequined sheath dress as a dinner gown. She asked Valentino to raise the waistline of a red silk blouson dress. And she asked Marc Bohan to remove a bow from the waist of a bodice and enlarge the one at its shoulder. In each case the designers followed directions and the garments, on display here, look entirely natural. The show is a testimony to the methods of these old-school couturiers, who sustained delicate relationships with wealthy, well-positioned women like de Ribes, their main clients. Today couture houses, led by contracted designers and managed by global conglomerates, seem focused on devising attention-grabbing outfits for starlets to borrow for red carpet events. For de Ribes couture dressing wasn’t media spectacle; it was a way of life.

The show is also an testimony to 80′s event dressing and its concomitant excesses. The fashions on display – dressy ankle-length gowns and pantsuits – brought back a nostalgia for that era, when it was socially acceptable to display personal wealth. The gowns are embellished with lace panels, ostrich feathers, metal palettes, cultured pearls, and cut crystals. The silhouettes are rouched, draped, pieced and ballooned. But the garments, as displayed, feel dramatic rather than excessive, luxurious rather than vulgar. Like her American contemporary, Jacqueline Kennedy, de Ribes’ rich personal style was tempered by a sense of the appropriate. She dressed to suit her life, and her life was lavish.

January 17, 2016 by Nalina Moses