Exhibition Review: In America: An Anthology of Fashion
In America: An Anthology of Fashion Title Wall, The Charles Engelhard Court in The American Wing
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Written by Megan May Walsh
Copy Edited by Erin Pedigo
Photo Edited by Lucia Luzzani
The Costume Institute in collaboration with The Met’s American Wing present In America: An Anthology of Fashion, an exhibition exploring fashion in the United States through a lens that highlights sartorial narratives that relate to the histories of the American Wing period rooms. As viewers step across the threshold of the museum’s American period rooms, they will first encounter George Washington’s American-made coat that some speculate he wore to his inauguration and President Abraham Lincoln’s Brooks Brothers-made coat that he wore when he was assassinated. Viewers will notice that President Lincoln’s coat is missing some pieces. After his assassination, mourners were allowed to cut off scraps of fabric as memorabilia for the political leader stolen from them. Across the exhibition, 13 period rooms conjure the stories of the forgotten heroes and talented hands behind the scenes of American style. It is an anthology of fashion that exalts the unknown, but wildly talented and incredibly important, seamstresses and dressmakers who have shaped the history of American style.
Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room Director: Sofia Coppola . Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Filtered through the imaginations and creativity of America’s greatest film directors such as Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, Regina King, Autumn de Wilde, and Tom Ford, In America: An Anthology of Fashion exposes unfamiliar sartorial narratives and makes known hidden stories behind the tapestry of American fashion. Approximately 100 men’s and women’s dresses from the eighteenth century to the present will be presented in vignettes as three-dimensional cinematic “freeze frames,” resembling movie stills. These frozen scenes in period rooms like a Shaker Retiring Room from the 1830s or a mural of Versailles from 1819 tell a story, layered and complex, about the impact of dress in molding American identity and culture “from the personal to the political, the stylistic to the cultural, and the aesthetic to the ideological” (The Met).
The Benkard Room Director: Autumn de Wilde . Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Wandering through each room, viewers will feel as if they stepped into a movie, the whirlwind of action, critical conversations, and wild drama frozen in time for them to witness all the elements at play–the politics and social distinctions revealed through the fabric and style of the different characters, the economic disparities evident between stylistic accessories, and the outlandish glamour alongside mundanity of contrasting social classes and racial differences. Particularly outstanding is Julie Dash’s “freeze frame” of white women bedecked in white gowns and dressed by Black women in ethereal veils of darkness with fairy-like wings. The stories spun into the very fabric of both the white women’s and Black women’s costumes seem to ripple from the garments’ seams as viewers witness the drastic economic and racial disparities gilded over by pearly beauty and ethereal grace. Other standouts include Tom Ford’s reimagining of the ‘Battle of Versailles,’ Autumn de Wilde’s Baltimore and Benkard Rooms, and Martin Scorsese’s Frank Lloyd Wright room.
Haverhill Room Director: Radha Blank. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BFA.com/Matteo Prandoni
“Butterfly” ball gown, Charles James (American, born Great Britain, 1906–1978), ca. 1955; Purchase, Friends of The Costume Institute Gifts, 2013 (2013.591). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Evening dress, Lucie Monnay (American, born Switzerland), ca. 1902; Gift of Estate of Annie-May Hegeman, 1950 (C.I.50.40.5a, b). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In America: An Anthology of Fashion includes the work of American fashion icons Bill Blass, Marguery Bolhagen, Brooks Brothers, Stephen Burrows, Bonnie Cashin, Helen Cookman, Fannie Criss Payne, Josephine H. Egan, Anne Fogarty, Franziska Noll Gross, Halston, Elizabeth Hawes, Eta Hentz, L.P. Hollander & Co., Charles James, Anne Klein, Ann Lowe, Vera Maxwell, Claire McCardell, Lucie Monnay, Lloyd “Kiva” New, Norman Norell, Madame Olympe, Clare Potter, Oscar de la Renta, Nettie Rosenstein, Herman Rossberg, Carolyn Schnurer, and Jessie Franklin Turner.
The exhibition is now on view at The Met Fifth Avenue until September 5th, 2022.
