-
W
- Fashion
Oct 2: Fashion at LACMA
October 2010
It’s couture made for a queen—or at least her courtiers. A
world-class trove of European clothing dating from 1700 to 1915 is on
view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the exhibition
“Fashioning Fashion” (October 2 to March 27, 2011), as part
of a series of events to inaugurate the Renzo Piano–designed Lynda
and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion. The collection, which is
largely French and English, traces the origin of the extraordinary
sewing arts that survive today—barely—in the rarefied world
of Paris’s haute couture. Originally all that beading, embroidery,
and passementerie was lavished upon both women and men; the style was
adapted in the 19th century by the richest of the bourgeoisie and
lingered into the Belle Epoque, when, as always, clothes functioned as
wearable art and portable status symbols. In our current dress-down
environment, such garments seem almost unimaginably expensive, showy,
and impractical, but “Fashioning Fashion” ends with a nod to
the plainer future: One of the newest pieces in the collection is a
men’s three-piece suit from 1911 that would not look out of place
today.
- Keywords
- When
