{"id":5402,"date":"2019-12-02T08:30:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T15:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/?p=5402"},"modified":"2019-12-02T12:33:25","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T19:33:25","slug":"guest-review-paris-capital-of-fashion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/2019\/12\/02\/guest-review-paris-capital-of-fashion\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Review: Paris, Capital of Fashion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ambitious goal of trying to fit the whole history of Paris fashion into one exhibition was always doomed to fail. Paris, Capital of Fashion<\/a><\/em> (on view to January 4, 2020) at the Museum of FIT isn\u2019t a lazy show by any means, but it\u2019s an uneven one and\u2014much like the boulevards of Paris itself\u2014spirals out in a lot of different directions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Worth & Bobergh, Blue ribbed silk ball gown, 1866-67, France, Lent by The Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Richard H.L. Sexton and Eric H.L. Sexton, 1962. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There\nis, as the French say, un embarras de\nrichesses<\/em>. Standouts include an eighteenth-century corset and\npanier; a rare Worth & Bobergh crinolined gown; an equally recherch\u00e9<\/em>\nChristian Dior gown designed for Lucien Lelong before launching his own couture\nhouse in 1947; a lacy Chanel LBD; and a Madame Gr\u00e8s goddess dress I hadn\u2019t seen\nbefore (naturellement<\/em>, it\u2019s in Hamish Bowles\u2019 collection). The black and\nwhite gown Yves Saint Laurent designed for Dior\u2014worn by Dovima in Richard\nAvedon\u2019s famous 1955 photo with elephants at a Paris circus\u2014is here, as is John\nGalliano\u2019s hooped Marie-Antoinette gown for Dior, shown on the runway on\na model with powdered hair and red slashes on her neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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18th-century French inspired dress in black velvet with wide border of gold metallic lace; appliqu\u00e9; sequins and tassels; boned d\u00e9collet\u00e9 bodice with flared sleeves; skirt with wide panniers and train; costume for Gladys George in “Marie Antoinette.” Adrian, film costume worn by Gladys George in the MGM film Marie Antoinette, 1938, USA. The Museum at FIT, 70.8.2<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But there are just as many missteps and missed opportunities. Christian Lacroix merged the exuberant spirit of the Belle Epoque with \u201880s excess, but the only Lacroix gown in the show is a snooze. An over-the-top film costume from 1938\u2019s Marie-Antoinette<\/em> feels out of place among all the couture pieces. The French fashion vernacular has been so widely disseminated that it\u2019s fair to assume that visitors will immediately connect Stephen Jones\u2019s corset-inspired top hat for Dior with an historic precedent (like the Mainbocher corset in Horst P. Horst\u2019s 1939 photo) even if no such corset is on display. But other references may be more obscure. There are contemporary embroidered coats for women inspired by eighteenth-century menswear, but the only actual eighteenth-century embroidered coats are upstairs in the Minimalism\/Maximalism<\/em> show. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the most iconic objects have been exhibited elsewhere in New York in recent memory, including an eighteenth-century doll\u2019s grand habit<\/em> from the Fashion Museum in Bath that was a centerpiece of last year\u2019s Visitors to Versailles<\/em> show at the Met, and Charles Frederick Worth\u2019s \u201cSpirit of Electricity\u201d gown, on loan from the Museum of the City of New York. The latter may have been made in Paris, but it tells a quintessential New York story: it was worn to Alva Vanderbilt\u2019s masquerade ball in 1883 and alluded to the recent electrifying of the city\u2019s streets. A red -feathered Chanel evening cape looks like an afterthought from the museum\u2019s Fairy Tale Fashion<\/em><\/a> show. It\u2019s always nice to see old friends, but these re-wears give the show an unwelcome sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em>, and one can\u2019t help wishing that these fragile if famous objects had been spared in favor of seldom-seen treasures. There\u2019s a lot of Jean-Paul Gaultier and John Galliano but only one Jacques Fath and one Jacques Heim, and there are major gaps in the early twentieth-century timeline. (To fill them in, head uptown to the Bard Graduate Center Gallery\u2019s meaty and meditative French Fashion, Women, and the First World War<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show may be centered on Paris but, thematically, it\u2019s all over the place. It\u2019s an unfortunate consequence of the museum\u2019s awkward configuration that the show opens with a parade of largely non-French gowns, illustrating the Parisian influence on international fashion before visitors have actually been to Paris. Here you\u2019ll find a Paris-made Dior dress and its Lord and Taylor knockoff, American gowns modeled in the so-called the Battle of Versailles in 1973, and an authentic Chanel suit displayed alongside its licensed, made-in-the-USA copy, which is not a true copy at all but missing pockets, the quilted lining, and other couture finishing techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you get past the disorienting outer\ngallery, the installation displays the Museum at FIT\u2019s typical visual flair. There\u2019s\na platform of voluminous Worth gowns, and an inner room lavishly decorated to\nevoke the salons and gardens of the Palace of Versailles. A wall of accessories\u2014called\narticles de Paris<\/em> in the nineteenth century\u2014includes fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/em>\nhats, shoes by Christian Louboutin, and Jeff Koons\u2019 Mona Lisa bag for Louis\nVuitton. But there are typos in the labels, and a dearth of contextual material\nlike fashion plates, magazines, and photos; for that, you\u2019ll have to turn to the\ncatalogue<\/a> and the museum\u2019s Fashion Culture podcast<\/a> series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the catalogue<\/a>, curator Valerie Steele eschews the usual couture-centric \u201cgenealogy of genius\u201d narrative\u2014charting the course of couture from Worth through Poiret to Chanel and Dior\u2014and instead sets out to examine the \u201ccultural construction\u201d of Paris fashion through a broader global narrative. She cites Daniel Roche\u2019s definition of a \u201ccapital\u201d as a \u201cconcentration of power\u201d rather than a physical place; it\u2019s why outsiders often mistake New York for the capital of the U.S., and Los Angeles or San Francisco for the capital of California. Louis XIV recognized that fashion is a potent form of soft power and lent state support to France\u2019s fledgling fashion and textile industries in the seventeenth century, virtually willing them into existence. As fashion journalist Grazia d\u2019Annunzio, a contributor to the catalogue, points out, the Italian fashion industry only enjoyed this kind of official patronage under Fascism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court of Versailles\u2014a concentration of political, economic, and aesthetic power if ever there was one\u2014makes a problematic origin story for Paris fashion, however. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was considered the antithesis of Paris; there was a tense fashion standoff between the court and the city. It wasn\u2019t until the ch\u00e2teau was amalgamated into the greater metropolis, both physically and figuratively, in the twentieth century that it became synonymous with \u201cParis\u201d in designers\u2019 minds. Pierre Balmain and Dior gave their gowns French names referencing the ancien r\u00e8gime<\/em>; Elsa Schiaparelli created a blingy black velvet and gold evening cape inspired by the ch\u00e2teau\u2019s Apollo fountain, included in the exhibition. Versailles has been used in fashion advertising and photoshoots, along with other Parisian landmarks like Eiffel Tower and the Place Vendome. It\u2019s easy to forget that the Battle of Versailles was, first and foremost, a fundraiser to finance the restoration of the palace to its former glory; the Americans may have \u201cwon,\u201d but the French got the prize in the form of a refurbished cultural showpiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the Sun King and his royal\ndescendants, the prevailing French fashion archetype was (and is) the\nParisienne. \u201cThe innate taste of Parisian women was often cited as an important\nreason for the success of Parisian fashion,\u201d Steele writes. If London was\ngrudgingly acknowledged as the capital of menswear, French fashion was synonymous\nwith femininity. This distinction became especially important after World War\nII, when several rival \u201cfashion capitals\u201d emerged, stepping into the void\ncreated by the Nazi occupation of Paris. Meanwhile, in France, foreign-born\ndesigners like Mainbocher, Galliano, Azzedine Ala\u00efa, and Guo Pei were acclaimed\naccording to their perceived \u201cFrench\u201d traits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The catalogue<\/a> essays largely focus on the reception and interpretation of Paris fashion in these new centers of soft power, including London, Shanghai, Milan, New York, and Melbourne. It has become a clich\u00e9 to call a city \u201cthe Paris of the East\/Midwest\/Arabian Peninsula,\u201d but these cities consciously defined or positioned themselves in relation to Paris. While the essays\u2014by an international lineup of scholars including Christopher Breward, Antonia Finnane, and Sophie Kurkdjian\u2014are thought-provoking, they don\u2019t necessarily relate to each other or to the exhibition, and they\u2019re no substitute for a much-needed illustrated checklist of the exhibition pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>\"\"\n\n\n\n

Paris, Capital of Fashion<\/em> is on display through January 4, 2020 at the Museum of FIT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is an art historian specializing in fashion and textiles. She has worked as a curator, consultant, and educator for museums and universities around the world. She is a frequent contributor to books, scholarly journals, and magazines, as well as an experienced lecturer. Her areas of expertise include European fashion and textiles and French and British painting and decorative arts of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. She is the author of several fashion history books, including Fashion Victims<\/a><\/em> and the new book Worn on This Day<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell The ambitious goal of trying to fit the whole history of Paris fashion into one exhibition was always doomed to fail. Paris, Capital of Fashion (on view to January 4, 2020) at the Museum of FIT isn\u2019t a lazy show by any means, but it\u2019s an uneven one and\u2014much like the boulevards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,360,4,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[247],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5402"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}