The Buzz About Insect Fashion
The recent announcement of MoMA’s website devoted to Louise Bourgeois: The Complete Prints & Books, got me thinking about insects. I adore Ms. Bourgeois’ sculptures and installations, and her continued use of spider imagery over her long career (she died at age 98 in 2010) to explore issues of the feminine experience never ceased to...
The Authentic Artist Myth
My Godmother sent me this brief article on David Hockney‘s withering opinion on artists such as Damien Hirst who rely upon assistants to “do the work” — Hirst has only painted five of the 1,300+ “spot paintings” in existence, and he was quoted as saying that many of his spot paintings are produced by others...
Collecting Clothes with a Conscience
Earlier this summer I watched the tremendous documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008) which follows a ridiculously adorable, now elderly, couple (Herb and Dorothy Vogel) who started collecting art in the ’60s and amassed one of the finest and most extensive of modern and contemporary art in the world. The twist here is this: Dorothy was...
Sebastian Smith, Fashion Photographer
I met this perfectly lovely — and dapper (he often wears a hat) — young man about a year ago at one of our favorite galleries, Chair and the Maiden. With more than a whiff of Helmut Newton, Sebastian Smith has managed to make a career of his passion: fashion photography. I picked his brain...
Shocking Colors
The past couple of fashion seasons, I’ve noticed the trend of pairing neutrals or murky tertiaries with a slice (or in some daring examples, a chunk) of neon, usually orange, magenta, or electric blue. Though it’s absolutely surprising– some might even say shocking– this is not actually a new 21st century invention. Many think of...
Subversion in Trompe L’oeil, Graffiti, and Fashion
Coming from an Art History background with all its unfortunate snooty and consumerist associations (fashion shares these themes, I’m afraid), I’ve recently become obsessed with its subculture offshoot, the publicly accessible graffiti (or “street art”) movement. Long fascinated by graffiti, I’ve recently gone on a binge, going out of my way to walk around Pilsen...
American Art, American Fashion. What is it, anyway?
As a native Cantabrigian, I read with interest and delight the NYTimes review of the newly opened, newly expanded American Wing of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, a museum I practically grew up in (my father still lectures there). I was especially intrigued by the following statement: “One can imagine arguments growing sharp in the...
A Different Take on Street Fashion Photography
A few months ago I had the delight of popping into the Met’s modestly-sized exhibition “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950–1980.” From the Met’s website description: “Leon Levinstein (1910–1988), an unheralded master of street photography, is best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in New York...
Fashion in Literature
I just read a fun list on Flavorwire of their 10 favorite fashionable literary characters. Allow me to summarize: Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando Scarlett O’Harain Margaret Mitchell’s Gone...
Fetishizing Military Gear
After seeing Gisele Bundchen’s latest Vogue shoot entitled “Call of Duty” in various military-inspired ensembles, my conflicted feelings about the sexifying of war gear swung hard and fast in the “that’s not cool” direction. Huffington Post presents these images with significantly less conflict: “let us know which is Gisele’s fiercest moment.” I should mention that...
The Politics of Mannequins, Part III – Mannequins in Art
Until the article I recently read, mannequins in their practical form held little interest for me; however mannequins in art have always attracted me, most likely due to my obsession with fashion coupled with my fascination with unsettling representations of people (and who doesn’t love to be unsettled?). Incorporating mannequins — invented to market and...
The Politics of Mannequins, Part I
I happened to run across an old issue of Hue, FIT’s alumni magazine, and read a surprisingly interesting article on “The Life and Times of Mannequins” by Alex Joseph. Though I have not previously studied dress forms in depth, I have been mistaken for a mannequin (I spaced out in a flu-induced frozen position while...
Cleopatra & Egyptian Fashion in Film
Fashion inevitably looks to history to interpret and re-interpret previous fashion trends. At the recent SAG Awards, I noticed 2 Egyptian-influenced dresses, worn by Toni Collette and Nicole Kidman: As I’m never content to stay in the current era for long, let’s go back 100 years to trace a century of Egyptomania…. The Egyptian style...
Coraline & Domestic Sewing Traditions
Last week I watched the movie Coraline (2009), directed by the stop-motion animator master Henry Selick who achieved recognition for his collaboration with Tim Burton in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). I was kind of blown away by his latest effort; it succeeded on many levels, but for the sake of this blog I’ll limit...
Corporate Collaborations with the Arts
Anna Wintour’s involvement with the Metropolitan Museum is reestablished at this time every year with the Met’s renowned Costume Institute gala, and we are again bombarded with pictures of A-list celebrities, socialites and models attending the lush affair. Whether attendees are portrayed in adoring light or to ridicule their outrageous outfits, the glut of coverage...
Art Deco Fashion & Social Commentary
Yesterday I attended a lecture at the New York Public Library accompanying their current exhibit “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve.” There was another lecture on art deco architecture that I attended a few weeks ago, but this one– “Fashions of the Art Deco Era”– was tailored for me. Paula Baxter, curator of the exhibit...
Susan Meiselas Photography Exhibit
Just saw the Susan Meiselas exhibit at the International Center of Photography. Though none of her carnie stripper photos were there, her pictures of the popular insurrection Nicaragua (1978-79) and Kurdistan were stunning, with an eerie unprofessional air about many of them. From the Nicaragua series there was one photo of a young woman in...
Book Review: On Fashion Criticism