Philly Hosts Patrick Kelly’s Runway of Love

Posted on November 30, 2014 by MsSusanB

Mismatched button-inspired looks line the center runway in the show (1986)

Supermodels having fun, crazy colorful buttons, zingy color, and tongue-in-cheek tributes to fashion’s greats – it’s all on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s tribute to one of our all-time favorite fashion designers in the exhibition Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love, on through December 7.

Click here to see our favorite Flickr photos from the exhibition, which has been packed with fashion admirers throughout the show’s run. The gallery is ablaze with life, references to African-American heritage, supermodel sizzle, and the sheer joy that Patrick took in upending fashion’s icons.

The center runway features lots of Patrick’s iconic button dresses, evoking his grandmother’s way of using mismatched buttons to refresh his well-worn clothes as a kid in Mississippi. As a youngster, Patrick consumed acres of fashion magazines – Vogue and Harpers were his favorites – and high-tailed it to Paris as soon as he could.

Always fun to spoof Chanel’s use of pearls (1988) and create a Ricci-inspired flamenco dress once modeled by Iman

He made and sold voluminous coats (inspired by Issey Miyake and Balenciaga) on the streets of Paris to earn cash. But soon his cut-up jersey tube dresses caught the eye of editors of Elle. Maybe it was because he created them for his model-friends to wear on casting calls. When the “tubes” were published, Bergdorf’s placed an order, put his work in their windows, and his career was off and running.

He appropriated sly references to Black culture in the American South and put his own unique high-fashion spin – flouncy dance dresses made from bandana fabric, denim jumpers inspired by sharecropper wear, runway shows with models sporting Blackamoor turbans, and watermelon accessories. Paris went wild over his exuberant runway shows.

A lot of the excitement was over the models who walked his shows — Pat Cleveland, Iman, L’Wren Scott, and other beauties – who cavorted and flounced all his flirty and fun creations. Watch the trailer and see Patrick and his supermodels in action:

Patrick created a bit of fashion history in 1986 when Pat Cleveland interpreted Josephine Baker in Patrick’s famous Banana Dance costume, a collaboration with jeweler David Spada. The photos went viral.

Two looks inspired by Josephine Baker. Left, the “Banana Dance Costume” (1986), a collaboration with jewelry designer David Spada

The show features videos of Patrick sporting his familiar denim overalls, a joyful designer with a lot of love in his heart for his models, friends, and colleagues. It’s fitting that the museum has posted on its web the things that he loved best. Click here to see Patrick’s Love List and a photo of Bette Davis wearing one of his looks.

If you can’t get to Philly to see the show, click here to see the museum’s site and work your way through each mini-slideshow. The curator’s copy is attached to each look.

Thanks to Bill T. Jones for lending so many of Patrick’s inspired creations and to the museum’s web team that has created such a terrific documentation of this bright light.

And how does a fashion exhibition like Patrick’s all come together? Here’s a backstage look with the exhibitions team:

FIT’s Fun, Flirty Historic Lingerie Show

Posted on November 9, 2014 by MsSusanB

Unusual combination: Sleeves on a silk corset with whalebone stays, circa 1770

After sifting through hundreds of corsets, petticoats, slips, nightgowns, knickers, baby dolls, and stockings, the FIT curators have selected 70 key pieces from the archives that lay out trajectory of ladies’ underthings in Exposed: A History of Lingerie, on display through November 15.

The upstairs gallery – usually reserved for gems from FIT’s spectacular collection – takes you on a journey through four centuries of shape-shifting garments that really contributed to the silhouettes of yesteryear. Remarkably, many look totally “today”. The first room pairs underwear and outerwear to make the point.

Hard corsetry items follow next – bustles and corsets from the 17th and 18th centuries, including two that are reckoned to be some of the first examples (at least, in FIT’s collection) of “underwear as outerwear” – a delicate, lavish petticoat and a spectacular 17th century whalebone corset. The telltale signs: If you weren’t showing them off, why would you own a corset with sleeves or a petticoat with such fine hand-embroidered detail?

1969 Pucci Lycra-Spandex body stocking for Formfit Rogers

1969 Lycra-Spandex body stocking by Pucci for Formfit Rogers

Predating flappers by more than a century, you can gaze upon the unstructured “natural corset” that 1815 fashionistas wore under their white Grecian-style muslins. One hundred years later, underwear history repeats itself with the 1920s silk underwear designed to be worn under the “corsetless” styles of the Roaring Twenties.

Then it’s on to many more 1920s intimate-fashion innovations – hostess gowns, boudoir mules, French cami-knickers sold at Saks, and the ultimate in period bohemian luxury, the Fortuny tea gown.

Retail history is noted in the 1930s section. Alongside the languid lounging pajamas, negligees, and lingerie-inspired evening gowns, you’ll learn that in 1935, Bergdorf Goodman became the first Manhattan retailer to open up a specialty store within the store specifically devoted to lingerie.

1949 overwire and a 1951 nylon net and silk taffeta petticoat from Dior.

In the 1940s section of the show, special honor is given to Dior’s structured nylon petticoats that gave the New Look’s iconic silhouette its shape, the role of the overwire bra, and the sensation caused by the 1940 debut of nylon stockings – a fashion must-have that quickly became impossible to acquire during WWII.

Historic intimate gems keep appearing through the exhibition, culminating in more recent innovations, such as the Gaultier’s girdle dress, Rudi Gernriech’s no-bra bra, and the revolutionary Wonderbra, as well as up-to-the-minute styles by La Perla, Agent Provocateur, and Victoria’s Secret.

Want to know more? FIT again gives us a stellar on-line exhibition site organized by decade. On each decade, click on “more images” to see nearly the entire exhibition. FIT’s exhibition blog contains the backstory on a dozen or more pieces from the collection.

Even if you’re able to get to Seventh Avenue this week, why not take a walk-through with Coleen Hill, the curator who created this beautiful, thoughtful, and delight-packed show?

The Paper Bag Was Her Design

Posted on September 21, 2014 by MsSusanB

MoMA honors Margaret Knight, 1870s inventor of the flat-bottomed paper bag

What will the MoMA curators pull out of the design collection next? Designing Modern Women 1890–1990, running through October 19, puts the spotlight on furniture, textiles, graphics, performance, kitchens, and even inflatables designed by some innovative women over the last century. How can you not love a show that begins with 1890s modern-dance provocateur Loïe Fuller and ends with 1980s pop icon Grace Jones?

The crowd last weekend was loving every bit of it, pausing to watch videos sprinkled throughout the show and marvel at designs – some 80 to 100 years old that are as modern today as they were at their creation.

The next time you carry away your morning muffin from the coffee counter in that little white paper bag, ponder that the flat-bottomed paper bag was invented in the 1870s by Margaret E. Knight and Charles B. Stilwell. Ms. Knight not only invented this classic, but also invented the machine that made it and was one of the first American women ever to receive a patent.

1901 dinner service by Jutta Sika and Koloman Moser

No, the dinner service is not from Pottery Barn. It was created in 1901 by the Austrian design team of Jutta Sika and Koloman Moser. Didn’t I just see a copy of Eileen Gray’s 1927 adjustable table at the D & D Building? Open shelving in your new, modern kitchen? Yes, that was Charlotte Perriand’s idea, and MoMA has (for the first time) installed this full-size, fully efficient, ground-breaking kitchen from her 1952 project with Le Corbusier.

And what about the Slinky? Invented by Betty and Richard James in 1945. You’ll have fun peering into the design cases and learning more about the women behind some remarkable things.

Slinky was designed by Betty and Richard James in 1945

In the 1960s portion of the show, you’ll see those famous Fillmore posters designed by Bonnie Maclean. And there’s an entire wall filled with iconic pop and punk graphics – all created by female designers – that should be familiar to anyone that traversed the downtown CBGBs scene.

There’s no digital media to accompany this fantastic show, so take a walk through our Flickr site. All of the items are from MoMA’s own collection, and we’ve taken slight liberties by arranging the photos in the show album in chronological order of the year that each design debuted.

And to bring it all back to the beginning of this design innovation tribute: Here’s a glimpse of 1897 Art Nouveau performance art by Loïe Fuller, courtesy of the Lumiere Brothers. The color you see here is a result of hand-tinting the film, but her actual perfomances used new theatrical stage lighting for which she held numerous patents. Listen to the MoMA curators explain her influence, but get over to MoMA (or the Flickr site) to take in this super-fun tribute to 100-plus years of smart women who thought differently and made it happen.

Groundbreakers App Ties History and Beauty Together

Posted on September 7, 2014 by MsSusanB

The New York Botanical Garden carved out an ambitious agenda in its Groundbreakers show – to tie the stories of six women of landscaping history, present a two-gallery recreation of an historic garden, pay tribute to the contributions of several landscapes within NYBG itself, create a poetry walk, and wrap it up with the history of early 20th-century photography and high-gloss publishing. They did it with GPS and an iPhone app, courtesy of Bloomberg.

Closing this weekend, Groundbreakers: Great American Gardens and the Women Who Designed Them is still worth downloading from iTunes, just to get a glimpse into the lives of six landscape-gardening pioneers, see their work, and understand the popularization of American gardening long before the dawn of HGTV or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here’s the link.

Photos of Ms. Johnston (left), lantern slides and projector, and Beals (right) on NYC street in 1902. Courtesy: NYBG

Here’s the story: back in the day (early 1900s), garden design and photography were two of the few career avenues available to women.

Way before Instagram, Photoshop, and two-way phone cameras, documenting the lush gardens involved lugging a gigantic, large-format camera up and down garden paths and around water features, processing black-and-white negatives into prints, turning some into newly-invented lantern slides, and having each slide painstakingly colored by hand. It helped if you had a car and an able-bodied assistant to help navigate the flagstone-lined paths with all the heavy gear.

Six American landscape pioneers who changed the course of American gardening. Courtesy: NYBG

Also, after the Industrial Revolution, aesthetically minded women (predating Lady Bird Johnson) felt it was time for American homescapes to get a little more spruced up.

The rich and famous were beginning to hire landscape designers to fix up the areas behind their East Side townhomes and acreages around their country estates. Why not document this and inspire upper middle class homeowners to follow suit?

The exhibition gives us a look at how artist visionaries, authors, and the publishing industry worked in tandem to record how landscape architects were creating romantic backyard landscapes and popularize beautification. Although seeing actual lantern slides, projectors, and gigantic tripods is amazing, one of the highlights is a recreation of the slide show by Frances Benjamin Johnston that basically blazed the trail of a new vision of what was possible – one image after another of gorgeous, visionary landscapes on the grounds of homes on the East Coast, California, England, and France.

NYBG recreated the evocative Moon Gate from the Rockefeller garden, inspired by their experience of the Forbidden City and designed by Beatrix Farrand

In the Conservatory, the team at NYBG recreated Mrs. Rockefeller’s garden, originally designed by Beatrix Farrand, to highlight how the garden was conceived, used, and enhanced by the Asian art Mr. and Mrs. John D. collected. Since Farrand took on this project in 1926, NYBG has the sounds of America’s Jazz Age wafting through the galleries. Take a look on our Flickr page.

Another great feature of this show and the app – NYBG’s GPS feature shows you where you are in the expansive garden and encourages you to visit features where these groundbreakers had a hand – such as Marian Coffin’s ornamental conifer collection and Ferrand’s Rose Garden.

Get a closer view of the spectacular Groundbreakers in NYBG’s news-style video:

If you have a bit more time, listen to this curator lecture on the Beautiful Garden movement in America in 1900 and see the photos used by Johnston home to show suburbanites exactly how it should be done. You’ll witness garden images that hadn’t been seen since 1930. Take a look and get inspired:

Click here for other videos: a lecture about Beatrix Farrand created Mrs. Rockefeller’s garden and how the NYBG team recreated it in the stunning Victorian conservatory.

Stunning Jewelry at Met Reflects Contemporary Art

Posted on August 27, 2014 by MsSusanB

These stunning creations of Eugene and Hiroko Pijanowski are made from paper cord and canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has not only reinstalled its American Modernist wing on the first floor, but it’s given over the design gallery right inside the door to Unique by Design: Contemporary Jewelry in the Donna Schneier Collection, on view through August 31.

Gertrude Stein is holding court in the far back gallery with some of Mr. Stieglitz’s treasures, but on your way to see them, check out the high-class, high-gloss presentation of masterworks of wearable art from the 1960s through today.

The thesis of the show is contemporary jewelry doesn’t exist in a vacuum and often reflects the prevailing art of the day — Pop, Minimalism, Abstraction, and so forth.

In 2007, Ms. Schneier donated 130 of her favorite pieces to the Met – just a small fraction of the collection she has been building for over 30 years. Here, these gleaming, surprising, artful, fun pieces are grouped to highlight their context within various themes of recent contemporary art.

Kiff Slemmonds Sticks and Stones and Words

As you marvel at each one, you’ll be thinking back across decades of gallery shows and installations of minimalist art, performance art, funky found art, and 3D printing.

Check out the gold neckpiece right inside the door. You might think it’s a riff on the Met’s room full of Columbian gold across the hall, but this treasure is actually made of paper and canvas by the Pijanowskis (Eugene and Hiroko).

Marvel at what seems to be Native American-inspired breastworks by Kiff Slemmonds. Her art piece is fabricated with a lot of stuff but mainly No. 2 pencils in the “narrative” portion of the show.

If you like self-referential playfulness, consider Gijs Bakker’s piece – a real diamond mounted on a PVC-laminated photo of a diamond. Recyclable art? Check out Robert Ebendorf’s brooch made from crushed auto window glass, beach glass, and a vinyl record.

Ted Noten’s clever Fashionista necklace made of tiny resin high-heeled shoes

And if you think it’s fun to poke around the history of contemporary art through jewelry that’s neatly tucked inside a single room, don’t ignore the fact that right beyond this gallery door is another art-history tour-de-force-in-a-box: The Met is displaying Mr. Duchamp’s famous green case, which is full of many of the same visual and conceptual challenges – “what is art?”, “what is play?” “what is hidden?”, and “everything you see is not as it appears.”

What would Rose Sélavy herself choose to don from the next room if the Met and Ms. Schneier gave her chance?

Peek at a few of the choices on our Flickr site, but enjoy wandering through the gallery and deciding for Rose and yourself.

The Sistine Chapel of Fashion Virtuosity

Posted on August 7, 2014 by MsSusanB

Clover Leaf Ball Gown – a 1953 silk faille, shantung, and black lace sculpture by Mr. James. Part of the Brooklyn Collection at The Met

When the Brooklyn Museum handed its fashion archive over to the Met in January 2009, the first thought that crossed everyone’s mind was the mind-bending masterworks that would now be sheltered under the protective wing of the Costume Institute’s crack conservation team — “Oooh, maybe the Met will do a Charles James show!”

We’re glad to report that the Met has done this master proud and given his humble admirers a fitting place to worship in its triumphant two-gallery show, Charles James: Beyond Fashion, which ends this weekend, August 10.

1952 portrait by Michael A. Vaccaro / LOOK Magazine. Courtesy: The Met; Library of Congress

Mr. James is credited with being among the first to perfect the strapless gown in the 1930s, an inspiration for Mr. Dior’s “New Look” in the 1940s, and the epitome of Vogue glamour dressing in the 1950s. He could do things with fabric that others simply couldn’t do or wouldn’t dare…well, maybe except for Madame Gres. He pushed silhouettes and fabrics further than most anyone could conceive and had the temperamental nature, drive for perfection, and uncompromising attention to detail that characterize any of history’s greatest, most passionate artists.

You always look at his creations and ask yourself, “How did he do it?” How did he get a spiral of fabric to stand out as it wraps sinuously around a sleek, strapless electric green silk mermaid dress? Is that sexy Thirties frock actually cut from one scarf? How did he create virtual moving sculptures from the world’s most expensive fabric?

Innovative digital display tells the back story of Mrs. Hearst’s Clover Leaf Gown – too big for Ike’s inaugural, but just right for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation

Long known for his innovative engineering, the Met came to a brilliant solution to explain the magic that Mr. James wrought over his decades of no-two-alike work – hire an architectural firm to show us.

Enter Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who have mounted these sculptures in silk inside an infinity-room gallery and paired each masterpiece with its own personal robot and humongous iPad-type display. Look at the dress and refer to the screen as the dress digitally deconstructs and is assembled again.

Cecil Beaton’s 1955 photo of Nancy James in the Swan Gown. Courtesy: The Met; Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

The crowds waft from dress to dress in no particular order, clustering silently to watch digital magic, see where the robot is pointing, and view photos of Mrs. Randolph Heart, Jr., Gypsy Rose Lee, or Josephine Abercrombie in said gown. The robot with the 1954 Swan Ball Gown captivates viewers by moving underneath to televise close-up views of some of the 1,080 square feet of tulle that Mr. James used to create the oomph.

The mirrored walls of the upstairs gallery and the see-through dividers downstairs are emblazoned with the wisdom of the man himself. He seems to be talking right to you as you wonder how he made the fabric do what it’s doing (“It’s the air that’s sculpted, not the silk”) or how he thought about the world of fashion (“We who have been ahead in style have usually been ahead in our thinking”).

Downstairs gallery, newly named for Ms. Wintour, filled with James creations

The second gallery (welcome back, ground floor Costume Institute!) displays his wool creations and sharply shaped cocktail wear. It’s interesting that James considered some of these genuinely more innovative than his often-photographed gowns. The curators have placed another of his “first” in a room at the back – the predecessor of today’s puffer coat. On loan from the V&A, it remarkably dates from the 1930s – his soft, sensual, silky answer to the boxy fur jackets that Ms. Schiaparelli was showing in Europe at the time.

We have to thank Mr. James for his vision and for making sure the Brooklyn design lab had so many examples of his masterpieces to teach and inspire future generations of Seventh Avenue designers. As he says, “In fashion, even what seems most fragile must be built on cement.” Lesson learned.

The Met’s a great steward. Just listen to the love in the tour of the show by its curators:

If you have more time, hear what Zac Posen has to say to the co-curator about The Master:

William Morris: Meeting the Needs of Artistic Shoppers

Posted on July 19, 2014 by MsSusanB

Detail of the large woolen Bird textile that Morris designed in 1878 for his home that was still being sold decades later.

William Morris not only did his historic homework, but was able to channel his convictions about the magic of the Medieval to tap into what artistic Victorian shoppers wanted – stylized visions of nature and old-school craftsmanship, the way it was done in the “old days.” See the evidence in two Metropolitan Museum of Art shows on right now — The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design (running through October 26) and William Morris Textiles and Wallpaper (closing July 20).

You’ll see how Morris used the historic textile collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum as inspiration for his modern wall coverings and textiles. In the little low-light gallery outside the museum’s textile center –many designed by his designer, John Henry Dearle — right next to the older textiles that inspired them both. You’ll be able to compare Morris’s own winding, intricate patterns with those woven by the 15th-18th c. Venetians, Germans, and Spaniards.

Voided velvet and silk from Venice, 1420

As our Flickr site shows, the Met has its own examples for you to enjoy.

Morris began designing in 1861, went through a couple of iterations of his company and collaborators, and finally landed at Hanover Square in 1917, where his workshop was located just a few steps from Liberty of London on Regent, another retail hotbed of the Arts and Crafts movement where many of the Pre-Raphaelites shopped. As Oscar Wilde once remarked, ““Liberty is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper.”

In 1923, the Met decided to scoop up all of the still-being-sold Morris textiles from London. What you’ll see in the show aren’t the originals, but likely subsequent runs of the super-popular block-printed decorating papers and yardage.

The Backgammon Players, the faux-Medieval, mixed-arts furniture collaboration that started it all 1861, with the 1878 Bird wall hanging far right.

The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy has paintings, photos, sculptures, and other works by a wide range of artists. Check out the early painted furniture that Morris did with Edmund Burne-Jones (1861) and the book, written by Morris in archaic English and illustrated by Mr. Burne-Jones at the height of Morris mania (1898).

Next to the furniture collaboration, the curators have hung Morris’s own Bird textile, an intricate woven wonder of woodland creatures and forest marvels. The detail will blow you away, but so will the fact that the original was created in 1878, but what you are looking at was likely manufactured decades later for artistic shoppers and décor enthusiasts who just had to have it.

Before LeBron: Historic Tribute to Basketball Pioneers

Posted on July 13, 2014 by MsSusanB

Claude Johnson of the Black Fives Foundation in the New-York Historical Society's "Black Fives" gallery.

Claude Johnson of the Black Fives Foundation, surrounded by memorabilia, in The Black Fives show at New -York Historical Society.

With LeBron James’s big announcement in the news, it’s a good time to trek over to the New York Historical Society to learn about how it all started – basketball, African American domination of the sport, and pro trades — in the fascinating second-floor show, The Black Fives, running through July 20.

When basketball really took off in the 1910s and 1920s, the top starting players were known as “fives.” Pre-integration, when African-Americans had their own teams, the amateur club starters were known as “black fives.” NYHS produced this show in collaboration with Claude Johnson, director of the Black Fives Foundation, who has been leading the charge to collect, document, and interpret the unknown or forgotten history of African American participation in one of America’s favorite games.

Recap: Basketball began in 1891, using peach baskets, as a game to keep youngsters occupied during long winters in the Northeast. in 1904, Harvard-educated Edwin “EB” Bancroft Henderson introduced the game to African-Americans through the public-school phys ed classes he taught in Washington, D.C. Physical activity was seen as a way to combat TB and pneumonia, which were rampant in cities. Here’s a short clip about Henderson:

It wasn’t long before basketball came to Harlem, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlantic City, and Pittsburgh, where there were large populations of young African American men and coach/role models ready to start something new in public schools, churches, and colleges.

Charles “Tarzan” Cooper (1907-1980), the star center who won the World Pro Basketball Tournament championship with the Rens in 1939. Photo: courtesy Black Fives Foundation.

Charles “Tarzan” Cooper (1907-1980), the star center who won the 1939 World Pro Basketball Tournament championship with the Rens. Photo: Black Fives Foundation.

Johnson’s collection of original cotton jerseys, trunks, stop-clocks, balls, and shoes from the 1910-1920 era is amazing, and really brings you back to the days when basketball courts were surrounded by wire mesh to protect fans (“cage match”, anyone?). You’ll see original, handmade basketball shoes, crafted of canvas and kangaroo leather and a life-size photo of how these snazzy sportsmen dressed.

Since NYC gymnasiums were still racially segregated, African-American clubs had to find alternate spaces to play. Uptown, the rise of basketball just happened to coincide with the Harlem Renaissance. Solution: use a ballroom and combine dancing, jazz orchestras, and basketball.

Ballrooms and basketball boomed, with “black five” teams now having really nice home courts. In 1923, Bob Douglas created the first Black-owned pro team for Harlem’s 2,500-seat-capacity Renaissance Ballroom at 138^th Street. Douglas christened them the New York Renaissance Big Five (fans called them the “New York Rens”), and promptly started offering big-time contracts to the best players in town. By luring top talent with lucrative pay, the Rens would dominate basketball for decades to come.

Since they couldn’t compete at first in white leagues, the Rens went barnstorming across the country to play white teams, averaging 130 games per season. Some venues were as large as 10,000 seats. Fans went wild during the Depression to see the amazing Rens. From 1923 on, the Rens won 1,673 out of 1,944 games, led by Charles “Tarzan” Cooper. By 1939, they captured the first World Championship of Pro Basketball in Chicago, defeating the top white team in the country, the Oshkosh All Stars. The Rens were hailed as the top team of the decade, black or white.

This 1971 Milton Bradley game , in the NYHS collection, celebrates the Harlem Globetrotters, who were a team that started on Chicago’s South Side

To learn more about this history, visit NYHS or go to the foundation’s web site and click through each section of the exhibition in the pull-down menu. In the Depression Era section, you’ll get the entire backstory on how the Harlem Globetrotters were actually from South Side Chicago and how even they got creamed by The Rens in ‘39. (The Globetrotters didn’t actually play a game in Harlem until 1968!)

Check out the exhibition video:

Here, you’ll see more about the Black Fives and Brooklyn, and how the Barclay Center is commemorating the “Black Five” era:

Vintage Attire on NYC Mean Streets

Posted on June 10, 2014 by MsSusanB

Editta Sherman in period dress on a graffiti-covered subway car to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Cunningham’s photo of Editta Sherman in period dress on a 70s graffiti-covered subway car going to a shoot at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Uber-fashion documentarian Bill Cunningham had a great idea in 1968, just as NYC was sliding toward financial crisis, crime, and (goes without saying) neglect of architectural sites, like Grand Central. Why not celebrate two centuries of NYC fashion and splendor on the street?

What were people wearing when some of the City’s most iconic homes, churches, and public buildings were built? Was it possible for a black-and-white photograph to reveal some new insight about the City from combining fashion, architecture, and a little fashion flair and attitude?

Editta poses for Bill in embroidered frock coat and breeches in front of St. Paul’s Chapel, the oldest church building (1766) in Manhattan

Results of Bill’s eight-year project are on display through July 15 in the Bill Cunningham: Facades photo exhibition on the second floor of the New-York Historical Society.

Without the aid of Wikipedia, he researched the years that some of his favorite historic places were built, and began scouring thrift stores for get-ups from the matching decade. He enlisted his muse, Editta Sherman, a fellow photographer and neighbor at the Carnegie Hall studios. For the next eight years, Editta and Bill went on weekend odysseys throughout the City, modeling and documenting over 500 historic outfits in front of interesting but sometimes forgotten facades.

In 1976, Bill gave 88 of his silver-gelatin prints to NYHS – the core of the current show, which is hung to emphasize the chronology of fashion and architectural style. The show was jammed with fashion lovers last weekend, soaking in the details from Bill and Eddita’s journey back in time.

Editta dresses for Bill in Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s own Callot Soeurs at the 1904 Harry Payne Whitney House

It starts with Editta dressed in an 18^th c. embroidered coat and breeches in front of the 1766 tower of St. Paul’s Chapel at Broadway and Fulton – the oldest church building in Manhattan that was considered “suburban” when President Washington lived here. Remarkably, they discovered this satorial gem in a Ninth Avenue second-hand store.

The visual treats just keep coming – a diaphanous Empire muslin on a model in front of City Hall (1803), Civil War-era frocks at Sniffen Court in Murray Hill, bustles and parasols at the 1884 Villard Houses (Helmsley Palace), and many spectacular gowns from the Gilded Age. Consider Eddita channeling “Diamond Lil” in front of 1891 Delmonico’s, the first modern American restaurant that innovated a la carte dining, private dining rooms, Lobster Newberg, and Baked Alaska.

In two photos, the team managed to borrow some historically relevant gowns – Gertrude Whitney’s Callot Soeurs frock for the shoot at the 1906 Payne Whitney home by Stanford White (Fifth & 79^th) and Mrs. J.P. Morgan’s Worth gown at the gazelle gates of the Apthorp.

Bill Cunningham’s take on modern fashions at the 1968 GM Building

The curators note that although women’s fashion in the early 20^th century was fairly liberating, the public architecture of New York remained tightly classical. The show’s final shots soar with the optimism of the modern – the “New Look” in front of the Paris Theater (1948), full-skirted flair on Park Avenue by the Lever House (1952), Givenchy at the Guggenheim (1959), and mod looks at the GM Building (1968).

You will savor every minute of your journey with these creative geniuses. Check out a few photos on the NYHS web site, find a copy of the 1978 book Facades, or get to the show.

If you didn’t see the film about Bill, rent it from iTunes or Netflix or buy the DVD. You can glimpse Eddita (a.k.a. The Dutchess) in the movie trailer below:

Trending in Fashion at FIT

Posted on April 29, 2014 by MsSusanB

Rodarte’s California condor-inspired evening dress (2010) (left) next to their chest X-ray dress for Target (2011) (right)

In contemporary times, you can’t really have a fashion trend unless you can get the items for your total “look” at H&M, Topshop, Macy’s, Nordstrom Rack, or another mass-market ready-to-wear site. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have designers send stuff over for a red-carpet look.

FIT’s wonderful Trend-ology exhibition acknowledges that although trends today may start from celebrity looks in magazines or on TV, they often arrive fairly quickly at Target, Zara, Express, and other shops. The pace of knock-offs has increased due to the mania for trend, faster speeds in shipping containers across oceans, and “instant” digital media.

As soon as you enter the upstairs gallery, FIT features a wall of 2014 trend data from consultant WGSN right next to an “on trend” ensemble from Opening Ceremony.

WSGN trend analysis and “on trend” Opening Ceremony ensemble (2014)

You see at a glance how WGSN parses global runway shows each season into key looks, colors, tones, flower shapes, and skirt lengths for ready-to-wear company clients. Without detailed Paris-NY-Milan-London catwalk analysis, how would anyone know what was “trending”?

Spoiler alert: from the analysis depicted here, autumn/winter 2014 is all going to be all about pastel blue, the slip dress, hand-drawn patterns, and midi-length skirts.

There’s also an iPad streaming coverage of the latest award-show red carpet right in front of side-by-side ensembles by the Rodarte sisters – one from their 2010 high-end couture line and one from their sold-out line for Target in 2011.

19th century passion for plaid in silk dress (1852) and wool bustle dress.

The curators have stuck two former “it” bags in front of you, too – one from Fendi and the other from Murakami’s colorful collection for Vuitton.

A photograph from a look at Celine’s Fall 2013 collection is mirrored on the mannequin behind, who sports an identical look that’s being marketed to the masses at Zara.

From the vintage looks in the rest of the galleries, the curators prove that trends mattered in the last few centuries, too. Neon yellow hues became the rage in the late 1700s due to the proliferation of imported Chinese silks.

Plaid mania was inspired by Queen Victoria’s Highlands flings at Balmoral Castle in the 1850s, and the craze for mass-produced paisley proliferated throughout the 19^th century, following the invention of the Jacquard loom.

Dior “New Look” (1950) (left) inspired Anne Fogarty to create a full-skirt dress for budget-conscious homemakers in 1954 (right)

Of course, most of the galleries showcase trends from FIT’s vast archive of more recent fashions – Hollywood bias-cut silks, jet-set fashions following the British Invasion, disco-era menswear (the wide pant legs and patterned shirts seemed to baffle younger male gallery goers), Donna Karen’s iconic 1980s wrap-skirt-bodysuit, and fashions covered in designer logos from the 90s.

The biggest surprise: That Anne Fogarty’s “housewife” dress owes its genesis to Dior’s New Look. Hey, Lucy! Hey, Ethel!

Strangest item: Halston’s uncharacteristic tie dye ensemble that looks more like a Giorgio di Sant’Angelo than the nearby Giorgio di Sant’Angelo.

Greatest pleasure: Seeing the mini-documentary about the first days of Vogue magazine location shoots in the 1960s, surrounded by mod, space-age Carnaby Street looks.

Eighties trends: Donna’s wrap, Thierry’s cut, and an absolutely fabulous Lacroix

Take a tour of 250 years of trends on FIT’s engaging, dazzling web site.

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