Avant-Garde Designers Give High Fashion Ethnic Twist

Posted on January 29, 2014 by MsSusanB

Striking a pose in an “Eskimo” hide, fur, and sinew coat in 1916. Source: AMNH

What if you took a group of young designers to a major NYC museum, threw open the doors to one of the largest textile and costume collections in the country, let them try on furs and dresses in the archives, seek inspiration, sketch, and create something that a major retailer could sell to a fashion-forward buyer?

It’s hard to imagine that FIT or the Met’s Costume Institute would ever agree to this (even under Tim Gunn’s watchful eye), but it’s exactly what happened in 1915 when a “fashion staff” inside the Anthropology Department of the American Museum of Natural History encouraged American designers and manufacturers to probe the AMNH collections to view the images, patterns, textiles, embroidery, beadwork, furs, and clothing of indigenous Great Plains, Mesoamerica, and the Andes people.

Mary Tannahill batik dress inspired by South Sea Island Art. 1919. Photo: Julius Kirschner. Source: AMNH

The Bard Graduate Center has seized upon this heretofore unknown fragment of museum and NYC history to create its own mind-bending reality show, An American Style: Global Sources for New York Textile and Fashion Design, 1915-1928, that weaves together fashion, industrial, museum, and scientific plot lines. Take this journey in person before February 2 or via the excellent digital site that BGC Digital Media has created.

In the wake of the 1913 Armory Show, three AMNH anthropology curators (Clark Wissler, Herbert J. Spinden, and Charles W. Mead) and one of Fairchild’s Women’s Wear journalists, M.D.C. Crawford, (who also held a Research Associate position at the museum) got a bee in their collective bonnet about leveraging AMNH’s extensive textile collection to convince designers that native Americas design could offer as much inspiration as Europe or primitive art from Africa.

M. D. C. Crawford, co-founder of the Costume Institute, with artist-designer Ilonka Karasz (1916-1919) Courtesy: Brooklyn Museum Archives.

After the top brass from H.R. Mallison & Co. began visiting AMNH’s Peruvian textile collections for inspiration on how to improve their silk fabric line, it wasn’t long before other business managers, designers, and mill experts were delightedly poking around behind the scenes, too. Why look to William Morris arts-and-crafts style from Europe, when you can offer something “American” to the consumer? Didn’t Aztec, Hopi, Cherokee, or Mesoamerican culture have something to offer? Soon, Wanamakers was hosting in-store displays of Mayan textiles and out-of-town retailers were heading uptown to the AMNH collections on their NYC buying trips.

Bard has plucked many of the inspirational items from the AMNH collections for this show (like the stunning Koryak dancing coat and another embellished waterproof topper made entirely of embroidered and appliqued salmon skin), adding samples of the fabrics they inspired, gorgeous dresses with evocative trims and prints, design sketchbooks, multimedia interactives, and a fashion slide show — perhaps an hour’s worth of perusing inside their tiny fouth-floor Focus Gallery. It’s quite a story.

Max Meyer’s hooded evening coat, inspired by the AMNH Koryak coat. Source: AMNH

Crawford recounts the Museum’s foray into industrial-arts inspiration in two 1917/18 articles in The American Museum Journal, which you can read in the digital flipbook that Bard has on its website and inside the exhibition, which documents the original artifacts that inspired each retail look. (Check out our Flickr site to see some of the items you can find for yourself your next ramble through the AMNH second and third floors.)

Soon after, Stewart Culin opened the textile study room in the Brooklyn Museum, and by 1919, AMNH mounted the Exhibition of Industrial Art in Textiles and Costumes. Take a look at the silks, industrial embroidery display, tea gowns, and ultra-modern bohemian-style batik dresses on the Bard multimedia site. See silks inspired by Plains Indian war bonnets, gowns inspired by South Seas batik prints, and numerous other designers, stories, ethnic looks, photographs, and industrial wonders.

Koryak woman’s dancing coat from Kushka, Siberia; fur, hide, bead, cloth, sinew; acquired 1901 by AMNH.

It’s surprising to discover that so many really sharp fashion photos were buried deep within the AMNH photo archives. The digital images, originally on lantern slides, look like they were taken yesterday.

The curators say that the AMNH initiative withered a few years later when some of the staff left and Mr. Mead passed away. But this museum-fashion story didn’t really end there. Mr. Spinder went to the Brooklyn Museum and worked with John Sloan and Abby Rockefeller to elevate tribal art’s status in the fine-arts world. Mr. Crawford, who became Women’s Wear design editor, co-founded the Met’s Costume Institute in 1937 and was a key advocate within the Brooklyn Museum to establish its influential Design Lab, which debuted in 1948. (Hello, Charles James!)

Curator Clark Wissler with the AMNH Anthropology accessories wall.

Could anyone imagine how much those sparks flying 100 years ago among AMNH’s and Mr. Boas’s snowshoes, bows, baskets, headdresses, teepee covers, and 19th-century Siberian armor would ignite such bright lights in fashion way out in Brooklyn and across the Park?

Thanks for unearthing this fashion story, Bard.

Brooklyn Museum Shows What Rich Americans Buy to Impress

Posted on January 6, 2014 by MsSusanB

Miguel Cabrera oil (1760) of Dona Maria de la Luz Padilla y Gomez de Cervantes sporting velvet beauty marks and bling

Conspicuous consumptions is nothing new, according to the Brooklyn Museum’s spectacular show, Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home 1492-1898, and they’ve gathered (mostly from their collection) four centuries of blindingly beautiful stuff to show how earlier generations of status-seekers showed off how special and rich they were. Catch it before January 12.

The Fourth-Floor show fills two huge galleries that have been partitioned by the curators into areas corresponding to rooms in a traditional Spanish-American home, where they’ve displayed the stuff that the colonial high and mighty would have put there. Although two-thirds of the United States was once under Spanish rule, the paintings, furniture, textiles, and other treasures you’ll see are from homes south of the border, including the Caribbean and south of the Isthmus. Check out our Flickr feed.

Giant 18th century silver status pins for women, slightly Incan-style

First, you’d dress to impress and make sure that everyone knew that you were somehow aligned with the upper classes back in Spain. The show puts English and Spanish-American portraits side-by-side in the first gallery to illustrate that the latter weren’t shy about applying ostentatious tiaras and pearls to themselves, slapping on the velvet faux-beauty marks, and shoving royal proclamations into the frame to convey your wealth, status, and privilege. Wealthy English colonials and their portrait painters took a more austere, understated approach.

Second, if you were of mixed race but possibly had some Incan royalty in your blood, you’d hang gold-flecked portrait series of Incan chieftains where everybody could see them in your home. The lady of the house might wrap herself in a locally woven textile sporting mixes of South American deities with that oh-so-familiar-to-Europeans Hapsburg double eagle. Then she’d bling it up with a giant oversize pin made out of solid silver.

Visitor inspects painted screen in exhibit area with the objects from the grand reception room of an upscale home.

Third, you’d emphasize your casual elegance by actually draping the rugs and tapestries all over the floor, stairs, and risers in the ladies’ sitting room. After gold, silver, and jewels, textiles were about the biggest luxury anyone could find, and Spanish Americans made and bought a lot. In British America, carpets were only used to cover tables, so the casual distribution of so much wealth below your feet was something only Spanish Americans could afford.

Because the Caribbean and coastal cities of South and Central America were right in the center of shipping and trade routes for centuries, wealthy people could buy pretty much anything they wanted and the curators show it to us – gorgeous Japanese screens, custom-printed Chinese porcelain, English-style sitting chairs, and Turkish rugs. No pennies were pinched in upwardly mobile, Spanish-speaking homes.

Peruvian bed of gilt wood (1700-1760) that would be shown off in a state bedroom.

And let’s not forget what treasures were produced right inside the Spanish protectorates – silver shaving basins, polychromed statues of the saints, gigantic gold-framed “statue paintings”, gilded beds, embellished leather traveling trunks (to go to your country home), solid mahogany furniture, and custom-made books of your family’s geneaology. We won’t even get started on the private chapel décor.

This show throws open a window on the first wave of high-status interior design and decoration – a story that is normally confined to the castles in Europe or the palace at Versailles, and one that is perfectly suited to be told by Brooklyn’s extensive Latin American holdings with a couple of key pieces from the sumptuous collections uptown at the Hispanic Society of America.

Chinese import: 1770 porcelain featuring South American animals, purchased by Ignazio Lemez de Cervantes

If you want to do a deep dive into upscale living of past centuries, visit the exhibition archive on the Museum’s website and click on the Objects tab. Or, see it all in person when it goes on the road: it opens at the Albuquerque Museum on February 16, the New Orleans Museum of Art on June 20, and the Ringling Museum in Sarasota on October 17.

And congratulations to Brooklyn for making it onto the cover of the winter edition of Humanties, the NEH magazine.

World Wide Web (and Weft) of Past Centuries at The Met

Posted on December 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

1730s Dutch brocaded satin, featuring exotic Asian islands and fauna, was refashioned into a more fashionable French frock in 1770. Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Elizabeth Day McCormick Collection

1730s Dutch brocaded satin showing exotic Asian islands and fauna was refashioned in 1770 into a more fashionable French look. Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A joyous collaboration among eight departments of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has written a new history of how a global network of fabric trade and manufacture once served the same purpose that YouTube, music videos, shelter magazines, Vogue, and The New York Times Style section do today – to present images of the latest trends and make anyone in the world that sees them understand the clothes or accessories needed to be “on trend” with other sophisticates.

Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800, running through January 5, tells a monumental story about how trends went viral pre-Internet. It was a slower world dominated by sailing ships versus transoceanic cables, but the tale spanning centuries, continents, and cultures shows how gorgeous garments, incredible tapestries, bedazzled church vestments, quilted bedding, luxurious wall hangings, tour-de-force printed fabrics, and royal furniture telegraphed “trend” in a different way.

Embroidered muslin dress and fichu. The 18th c. craze for Neoclassical across Europe drove massive imports of lighter-than-air Bengali muslin. Source: The Met

Embroidered muslin dress. The 18th c. European Neoclassical craze drove massive imports of airy Bengali muslin. Source: The Met

The show can’t fully be appreciated in just one walk-through. Each textile and garment is incredible to behold, and the network of interrelationships among craftsmen, artisans, tradesmen, royal buyers, rich merchants, and brave sailors traversing strange shores is equally rich, complex, and layered.

This two-dimensional pageant, enhanced by exquisite gowns and garments whose fabrics were sourced from the four corners of the globe, is given the full-bore treatment in the top-floor galleries reserved for blockbusters.

How do you tell a story this big? The curators decided to put a large interactive map of the 16th- to 18th-century trade routes right inside the door, which brings you up to speed on the French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British trade routes linking the Americas, India, the Orient, and islands.

Then come the galleries dedicated to the styles and fiber-tech associated with each – silks woven in China for Europe and Japan, Spanish embroideries that reference Islamic carpet borders, weavings made by Peruvian grand masters of the art, and Indian resist-dye masterpieces that turned into English chintz and fabrics for the King of Siam.

Japanese Jinbaori made from Dutch 17th century wool and Chinese silk, a luxury item worn over samurai armor. Source: John C. Weber Collection

17th c. Japanese Jinbaori made from Dutch wool and Chinese silk, a luxury item worn over samurai armor. Source: John C. Weber Collection

In the Spanish gallery, you’ll see how the crowned double-headed eagles of the Hapsburgs adopt kind of a Chinese-phoenix look when 16th-century Iberian traders commissioned silk artists in Macau to create silk they could sell back home. By the 17th century, everyone – East and West – had become accustomed to enjoying “exotic” images from halfway around the world – birds, animals, architecture, flowers, and landscapes. It had the same impact as Google Earth and World Wide Web access today.

One of the more startling facts is that before Commodore Perry “opened” Japan to the West (ref. Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, the musical), Japan was more into luxury-goods consumption than production. Apparently, the trend was to import the ultra-luxury, Dutch wool, and make it into topcoats that Samurai warriors could drape over their armor.

If you don’t see this in person, visit the online exhibition site for an encounter that’s a real treat: You’ll get to zoom into each quilt, drape, embroidery, dress, shawl, and piece of fabric to see it all super-close.

A late-18th century Indian-chintz Dutch jacket that knocked-off a French designer jacket in pink French fabric. Both have similar exotic floral prints. Source: The Met

Click on the “full screen” button on each and toggle in to examine all of the glorious detail. The web site will tell you the story and show you the items in each gallery. You’ll be surprised to find the genesis of the fabrics-on-walls interior-decorating craze for country homes in the late 1700s and how men-only clubs adopted both plain and exotic dressing-gown dress from the Orient (a style also featured prominently in the current FIT show).

The King of Siam’s royal 18th century guard wore these resist-dye tunics. Fabrics were made in India and tailored in Siam. Source: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

When Whales Walked Explained at AMNH

Posted on December 11, 2013 by MsSusanB

Whales exhibit tells the evolution story. Courtesy: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Right inside the exhibit, Whales: Giants of the Deep, the American Museum of Natural History answers two questions that have stumped centuries of nature lovers – how did the world’s largest sea-loving mammals ever evolve from land animals, and who are their closest relatives?

In the last 20 years, DNA experts and paleontologists have been hacking away at these questions, and the show provides some startling visuals and answers: Whales (a group that includes dolphins and porpoises) came from four-legged animals that hovered close to shore lines, snapping up fish. Oh, and their closest relatives on the Mammal Tree of Life are…get ready…hippos. See the show before January 5.

Clue to solving the mystery – the skull of Andrewsarchus, three feet long, found in 1923 by Kan Chuen Pao on AMNH’s second Gobi expedition. Courtesy: AMNH/R. Mickens

The first thing you’ll see is a massive skull of Andrewsarchus, a 45-million-year-old whale cousin, who would have stood over six feet tall at the shoulder. He was found in Mongolia on the famous AMNH Central Asiatic Expedition in the 1920s (remember the dinosaur eggs?) and to this day is the only one found.

The paleo team compared the features on his skull to other mammals, ran their analysis through cladistics software, generated a family tree, and learned that Andrewsarchus falls somewhere near the evolutionary point where whales and hippos had a common ancestor, a key clue.

Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Pakicetus, the oldest known ancestor to whales

A huge discovery in Northern Pakistan in 1983 began to unlock the rest of the mystery. Found in 50-million-year-old Eocene rocks, remains of the enigmatic, four-legged, fish-eating Pakicetus were discovered at the edge of what was once an ancient sea. It was deemed by scientists to be the earliest known modern-whale ancestor. Many specimens were unearthed, with ear bones looking like modern-day dolphins, but ankle bones more like a pig’s, giving scientists a reason to place his ancestry in the “artiodactyl” category, which includes hippos, pigs, antelopes, camels, and other even-toed hoofed animals. Subsequent finds and DNA analysis of modern whales further solidified the hippo-relation hypothesis.

Cladogram showing family relationships of whales and artiodactyls from the AMNH guide for students in grades 6-8

The show includes a full replica of his skeleton, along with other fossils from the subcontinent showing the transition of four-legged wolf-sized animals to the streamlined bodies that we now associate with ocean- and river-going cetaceans. You’ll see a terrific video that animates the transition from longer-snouted, web-footed fish-eaters that paddled through estuaries (Ambulocetus), to more streamlined sea-going mammals whose front legs became flippers and back legs disappeared nearly completely. Kutchicetus (43-46 million years ago) shows evidence that it probably did some deep dives, and Durudon (37 mya) had nostrils at the top of his head, flipper-hands, and apparatus at the end of his tail that suggests a support for flukes.

A clue from India. Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Kutchicetus, dweller in ancient tropical seas

A clue from India. Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Kutchicetus, who lived in ancient tropical seas

The show was originally organized by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and features a mix of AMNH and Te Papa artifacts and insights.

There are many other wonderful biological, historical, and cultural details to the whale story, as the YouTube below shows (84K hits and counting), but shout-outs must be given to the two stars — large Sperm whale skeletons (think Moby Dick) on display, lovingly named and transported here by the Maoris, who found the stranded duo, prepared, and blessed them for special appearance in New York.

Met’s YouTube Star Seeks Holiday Friends

Posted on November 27, 2013 by MsSusanB

Mr. Roentgen's Berlin Secretary Cabinet, the viral NYC museum YouTube sensation, awaiting visitors in Met Gallery 553

Mr. Roentgen’s Berlin Secretary Cabinet, the viral NYC museum YouTube sensation, awaits visitors in Met’s Gallery 553

It’s lonely at the top. More specifically, it’s lonely in the Metropolitan Museum’s Gallery 553, where one of the biggest YouTube stars in NYC museum history is holding court until January 26 – David Roentgen’s Berlin Secretary Cabinet, which has racked up 4.4 million hits since his show, Extravagant Inventions, closed last January.

That’s right. A piece of mechanical furniture has 4.4 million YouTube fans (in addition to 13K on the Met’s own website) – quite an achievement since it had only around 200,000 when its show closed. It’s not the only piece of mechanical furniture to gain big YouTube numbers (another has over 91K), but to put the Cabinet’s achievement in perspective, consider that the Met’s McQueen video has only racked up 72,000 views in the two years since that blockbuster ended.

The crowds were crazy for the 18^th-century marquetry extravaganza (see our earlier post), and the Met asked the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin if it could keep the YouTube star a little longer.

The Cabinet’s video, displayed also in the gallery, has gone viral with 4.4M views

The Met dedicated a cozy corner of its First Floor to the Cabinet and some of its other pieces from Mr. Roentgen’s studio — a rolltop desk and tall clock from the Met’s own collection, and a mechanical table lent by the Cooper-Hewitt. Take a closer look on our Flickr feed.

But every time we pass by, the Cabinet seems a little lonely. The Met says it’s likely the most expensive piece of furniture ever manufactured (there were only three), but it seems like the Fabergé eggs in the hallway are getting all the foot traffic. Yes, they’re beautiful, but a piece of marquetry that’s gone viral is something that deserves some in-person praise.

During the holidays, just hang a left at the Christmas tree. Look for a tall stately Cabinet in a gallery on the right after you pass through the European Sculpture Court and before the rooftop elevator. Spend a little time with the star before he decamps the Big Apple for Berlin.

Roentgen’s Rolltop Desk also has its own video and has 59,000 YouTube fans of its own

If you want to see the Roentgens in performance, the Met’s hosting a gallery talk and demo of the mechanical furniture at 2:30pm in Gallery 553 on December 17 and January 14

The Cabinet’s mega-hit video (produced by the Berlin museum, but posted by the Met) is also on display in the gallery — no people, no curators, no talking, no cats…just subtitles, a human hand wielding a key, and the magnificent magic of Mr. Roentgen. Hold on for the hidden easel.

Oldest Painted Theater Curtain in America on View in NC

Posted on November 25, 2013 by MsSusanB

The original 1858 William Russell Smith drop curtain, displayed in Thalian Hall’s Parquet Hall

Lincoln was prepping for his sixth debate with Douglas in Illinois when the curtain went up on October 12, 1858 at Thalian Hall in Wilmington, North Carolina – the same curtain, still on display, that is considered to be the oldest existing theater drop in America, painted by Philadelphia-trained landscape artist William Russell Smith.

Back in the 1850s, major theaters up and down the East Coast were in pursuit of the classically trained Smith to create romantic, ethereal landscape images on the gigantic canvas curtains that audiences saw when they entered opera houses. Typically framed by an ornate proscenium, the drop transported theatergoers to the work of make-believe, Moliere, and Macbeth – staples of the touring companies and troupes of the time.

Detail of original drop curtain, done in distemper on 30-foot canvas

Detail of 1858 curtain, distemper on a 30-foot canvas

Today, except for Wilmington’s Thalian Hall treasure, those grand masterpieces are gone, victims of time, decay, and impermanence like the superstars of yesteryear. It’s quite a miracle that Thalian’s original curtain has still survived, considering that it’s not painted in oil, but distemper – a less permanent, water-soluable medium, essentially colors ground into glue. When an artist applies the wet pigment, he sees the opposite color, which gradually turns into the “true” color when the paint dries. It’s a process that could only be executed by a skilled master, particularly on a 30-foot wide canvas. The surface of the curtain holds the granules (like a piece of paper holds pastel fragments).

Wilmington, NC’s Thalian Hall, built 1855-1858, one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the South

No wonder Smith purpose-built a huge studio in his home with poles that could be raised and lowered as he worked on a gigantic scale first with a charcoal sketch, then with distemper (move over, Chuck Close!). When Smith finished painting his commission, he carefully folded the canvas, rolled it on a long pole, and had it delivered to the opera house.

Thalian Hall received its long-distance delivery this way, because Smith never set foot in North Carolina. The new opera house was designed by New York architect John Trimble, who built Barnum’s Museum and many New York theaters of the mid-1800s, including the New Bowery. Smith’s curtain was the finishing touch, depicting an Aegean sailing ship arriving at classical islands filled with temples dedicated to Apollo, evoking commencement of the ancient Olympiad.

Detail of Thalian Hall’s beautifully restored proscenium and box

The curtain was in service from 1858 until 1909, when a restoration was planned. Historians know it was hung again by 1938 (see the photo in our Flickr feed). It got hurt a little in the 1940 WPA renovations, and was known to be back in place in 1947, but disappeared after 1963. It was rediscovered in 1979, when Mrs. Juanita Menick, the president of the board, told the new Thalian director that she might still have an old curtain that she took years ago to her home for safekeeping. Thank goodness for those large, Southern homes.

Although only 15 feet of the original 30-foot drop remained, tribute was paid to the historic artwork. The fragile canvas was used as part of the set for Thanlian Hall’s 125^th anniversary celebration, and now hangs, ready for its closeup, in the luxurious entry to the theater’s orchestra section.

Hear how executive director Tony Rivenbark rediscovered it, and watch historian David Rowland’s talk about the life of William Russell Smith (at 4:20), whose romantic landscapes of New England somewhat predated the Hudson River School; the imagery used in the magnificent theater curtains (at 30:22); and the astonishing discovery recently made in Smith’s grand studio (at 35:30) in this YouTube video.

Thalian Hall’s balconies and orchestra

You can read more about the historic theater on its website (and check out the video on Thalian’s “thunder roll” device, another “only remaining in America” theatrical wonder). Glimpse more of this theater’s grandeur and photos of the illustrious performers who have trod its boards on our Flickr feed.

In Wilmington, you can view this remarkable piece of theater history any time during box office hours.

Making Yesterday’s Fashion Totally Now

Posted on October 27, 2013 by MsSusanB

History repeats – a silk Robe d’anglaise from 1765 and a 2009 ribbon-and-wire creation by Agatha Ruiz de la Prada

History repeats – a 1765 silk Robe d’anglaise with Agatha Ruiz de la Prada’s 2009 ribbon-and-wire runway creation

Within FIT’s upstairs gallery, you’ll receive a master class (from the masters) on how to take something old, inject it with an inspired twist, and create Vogue-ready looks ready for the modern world in FIT’s show RetroSpective, running through November 16.

FIT curator Jennifer Farley did an outstanding job of selecting iconic looks associated with well-dressed woman from previous centuries and pulling interpretation after interpretation on that theme from FIT’s collection. Historical references, empire waists, hoop skirts, and leg-o-mutton sleeves all get the old/new side-by-side treatment in the galleries.

History reinterpreted –elevated sandal created by David Evins for Elizabeth Taylor in her 1961 epic, Cleopatra

How did forward-looking designers mine ancient cultures, textures, and materials and make them look current? Look no further than the Grecian evocation of Madame Grés, sandals designed by David Evins for Liz’s 1961 Cleopatra look, Valerie Porr’s 1960s take on Guinevere, and Versace gone baroque. Click on the links to see the pieces on the show’s website.

Was there ever a time that rhinestone buckles weren’t applied to dainty evening shoes? Apparently not in the last several centuries, since examples from the 1740s are displayed alongside Peter Yapp 1910 satin pumps, 1959 Julianelli suede pumps, and 1995 red-velvet Manolos.

Hoop dreams from 1860 and Thom Browne’s Spring 2013 collection

In the section on bustles, you’ll see beautiful 1870s creations alongside bustle-inspired works by Schiaparelli (1939), Herrera (1988), and Anna Sui (1999). But across the aisle in the section on hoop skirts, you expect to see 1860s dresses next to more modern works by Hishinuma (1996), Rochas (2004), and Thom Browne (2013). But who could expect to see hoops from the Fifties – Hoop-la (1956), which kept your bouffant skirt fluffed out, and the amazing Belle O’ the Ball collapsible skirt hoop (in its original box!), which allowed every girl-on-the-go to sleep easier knowing that her bouffant could be perfectly pouffed wherever she travelled.

Lauren Bacall’s wool crepe 1965 flapper-inspired dress by Norman Norell

If you love fashion, get to this show and enjoy additional meditation on the decades of transformations associated with the New Look, corsets, platform pumps, playsuits, paper dresses, clogs, grunge, and graffiti. If you can’t get to the show, take some time to look through the show’s website to see about a third of what’s there and to read more about each concept and creation. FIT did a beautiful job on it.

And maybe someone from FIT can explain how Norell made such a perfectly pleated 1965 flapper dress for Lauren Bacall out of wool crepe?

Shanghai Glamour Tribute in NYC Chinatown

Posted on October 20, 2013 by MsSusanB

1940 Qipao (cheongsam) designed and worn by Madame Wellington Koo, the wife of China’s ambassador to France. Note the tricolor piping.

If you think Shanghai is the most modern city in China today, its association with forward-looking design and trend is nothing new. It’s been on the vanguard of style back for over 100 years, and the Museum of Chinese in America is paying tribute by looking back to the 1920s, when it was called the “Paris of the East”.

MoCA’s fashion history tribute, Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s, is mounted in an intimate gallery on the first floor, right next to it’s acclaimed show of contemporary Chinese-American fashion designers, Front Row. But this show takes you back to a time when women in Shanghai began breaking out of traditional roles, pursuing academic careers, and sporting unique, cutting-edge fashion that was all their own.

Dance-hall hostesses and courtesans in Shanghai led the charge toward 20^th-century fashions as early as the 1910s, and other “modern” women didn’t want to be left behind. Shorter dresses and more fitted styles were leaving behind the traditional wide-cut Manchu cover-ups. Check out the slim look of the aviatrix depicted in this 1918 magazine. Whether Shanghai women were flying planes back then or not, Shen Bochen’s magazine illustration indicated the shape of things to come.

Modern 1918 aviatrix, as illustrated by China’s leading socio-political cartoonist Shen Boehen

Although it was a time when coquettes still flirted with ostrich feather fans, modern Shanghai women were being celebrated in special issues of Vogue and other pop culture magazines. It’s nice that MoCA’s curator has featured a few magazines right alongside the fashions, which are no loan from the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou.

Take a look at the installation on our Flickr feed, where you can glimpse the evolution of Shanghai’s famous form-fitting qipao, or cheongsam, one of China’s most iconic contributions to world of fashion.

By the Twenties, cheongsams got tighter and more embellished as they were adopted by movie stars, daughters of the rich and powerful, diplomats’ wives, really smart women, and other over-achievers. Throughout the 20^th century, Hollywood appropriated Shanghai’s sleek invention to represent exotic beauty, intrigue, cunning, and glamour.

Green silk and black velvet evening shoes worn by fashionable women in the Twenties, lent by FIT

Get downtown to Centre Street before November 3 to go back in time with dancing dresses of silk georgette, embroidered and embellished silk silhouettes, colorful silks, vintage films of Shanghai style, and several pair of stylish strappy silk shoes on loan from FIT’s collection.

Rich & Famous at Green-Wood’s 175th Anniversary

Posted on October 11, 2013 by MsSusanB

Show entrance featuring Green-Wood’s spectacular Gothic architecture.

It’s big, green, historic, beautiful, and has more celebrities inside than you could ever imagine possible in an out-of-the-way spot in Brooklyn. Any day of the week, you can take a trip out to the lush woodlands, hills, and statuary gardens of Green-Wood Cemetery (and you should!), but every NYC history geek needs to visit the Museum of the City of New York’s A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery before October 13 to plumb the riches that have been assembled to celebrate its 175-year history.

We’re providing a walk-through on our Flickr feed, but the virtual experience is no match for the first-hand encounters with objects associated with the New York titans that are interred within the 478 acres of hills and countryside of Green-Wood itself – Tiffany, Duncan Phyfe, Boss Tweed, and even The Little Drummer Boy.

The floor map and vitrines with items associated with Green-wood’s most famous

Consider the retail giants and brands: All five Brooks Brothers (who invented ready-made suits in 1849), the six Steinways who made pianos in Queens, Ebhard Faber (remember pencils?), the Domino Sugar owners (who once had 98% of the entire US market and who gave most of their vast art collection to the Met), the creator of Chiclets, the founder of Pan Am, and even F.A.O. Schwartz (yes, it’s a person).

MCNY has put the map of Green-wood on the floor of the gallery and has placed vitrines with objects associated with the rich and famous sort-of where they would be in the actual cemetery. Walking through the show is like random-access memory. You don’t know what or who you’ll stumble upon.

The tribute includes artists (from Currier & Ives and Asher Durand to Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, and Jean-Michel Basquiat); composers (Frank Ebb, Mr. Bernstein, and disco legend Paul Jibara); and inventors of things like the safety razor, the sewing machine, soda fountains, and the safety pin (think about that). Yes, it all happened in New York.

Spanish-language poster for “The Wizard of Oz” as a tribute to Frank Morgan, who played The Wizard

Green-wood is New York’s equivalent of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, full of vistas, trees, paths, lakes, works by celebrity sculptors, military memorials, and elaborate, ornate above-ground tombs. Lachaise spawned an international mania for sylvan-glade cemeteries when it opened in 1804, and when Mr. Pierrepont was laying out the Brooklyn street system in the early 1800s, he left a big, open green spot in the plan, where Green-Wood is today. It opened in 1838, predating Central Park, and grew into the No. 2 tourist attraction in the United States (after Niagara) by the 1850s.

An 1875 Howe Sewing Machine by the inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe.

The show’s front hall has spectacular landscape photos taken last year by Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, serving as luring calling cards to take the actual expedition to Green-Wood and its celebrated trolley tours led by uber-historian Jeff Richman.

Medieval Foodies

Posted on September 29, 2013 by MsSusanB

When you enter Mr. Morgan’s Library, you never know what you’re going to find, since the curators are always surprising us with treasures from the archives. Remember when the volcano spit ash all over Europe several years ago and all the flights were grounded? The Magna Carta couldn’t get home, so it took up residence for a few months right in front of Mr. Morgan’s big fireplace in the East Room.

If you get over there before October 6, you’ll get to see something just as unique – a scroll from the mid-1400s containing 200 recipes (in Middle English, of course) that are fit for a king or royal lord. Move over, Smorgasburg!

The scroll would have been created by foodies some time around the reign of Henry VI (1422-1461) or Edward IV (1461-1483) during the War of the Roses. Henry’s objections to the aristocrats’ rights protected by the Magna Carta led to civil war, which was won by Edward, his successor from the House of York. At least someone was eating well and practicing penmanship during this tumultuous time in Merry Olde England.

30-foot walls of Mr. Morgan’s Library have three stories of inlaid Circassian walnut bookcases with treasures of world literature. Photo © 2006 Todd Eberle

The cookery scroll is displayed right inside the library door, past the historic marbled rotunda, keeping company with one of Mr. Morgan’s three Gutenberg bibles just opposite. It’s fitting that these two treasures are holding court together: one showing the hand-crafted way that oral traditions of the one percent were being preserved; the other suggesting the revolution that was about to unfold as movable type and printing presses made the printed word universally accessible. Check out the amazing digital facsimile of Mr. Morgan’s printed treasure.

The scroll is part of an ongoing exhibition series, Treasures from the Vault, which also features music, letters, and manuscripts from the greats of Western culture. Check out the surroundings.

Here’s a video of everyone’s favorite still-working Tudor kitchen at Hampton Court Palace. The palace wasn’t built until 1529, but it will give you a visual on how some high-end cooks could have been using the scroll 550 years ago.

For more detailed 14^th century cooking techniques, check out the YouTube by MedievalArtScience.

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