PLAYING DRESS UP

I’ve always understood that costume is one person’s fantasy of another, while fashion is one person’s fantasy of herself. The Anna Sui retrospective at the Museum of Art and Design, The World of Anna Sui, flattens that distinction.

When styled for shows and shoots Sui’s models have a boldly cluttered look. A woman might wear an Alice in Wonderland inspired dress over Op Art patterned tights with a fitted Victorian peacoat, a feathered hat, and elbow-length kidskin gloves. This rich layering and accessorizing drowns out the fineness and complexity in the tailoring. I don’t think any two dresses here share the same piecing; each one is crafted uniquely, inventively. To examine them individually is the great pleasure of the show. The princess seams of this coat, the fringe along this handkerchief hem, the embroidered yoke of this dress. It’s these details that make the garment, and also give them a costumey feeling. The garments are willfully overdone, joyfully baroque.

The show is organized in thirteen clusters of mannequins, spread over three floors, organized by social type, including what the museum identifies as “cowgirls, grunge girls, hippie chicks, hula girls, Mods, pirate rock stars, Pre-Raphaelite maidens, and surfer nomads.” My favorite outfits are the ethnic ones, labelled “tribal,” perhaps to sidestep accusations of cultural appropriation. There are dresses whose silhouettes and embroideries are inspired by traditional Native American, Inuit, Indian, Ukrainian and Chinese dress. Each is so seriously and unironically executed that it seems less like a copy than a dream, in fabric, of a woman. Anna Sui’s clothing supports a woman being herself while allowing her to imagine that she is someone else.

Photograph courtesy of MAD Museum.

May 04, 2020 by Nalina Moses

MASQUERADE

A professor of mine, the influential scholar of African art Sylvia Ardyn Boone, traveled to Sierra Leone in the 1970′s to study the aesthetics of Mende culture. She understood that the stunning, elaborately braided and sculpted hairstyles women wore were a measure of social prosperity. There were no beauty parlors, and the most fashionable styles demanded considerable skill and time. So only women well-positioned socially – with loving and supportive aunts, sisters, cousins and friends – had good hairstyles.

Maybe this is also true of homemade masks. During video chats several friends mentioned they were wearing scarves bankrobber-style to the grocery store because they didn’t know where to get cloth masks. So I decided to make some to share. I spent hours online, researching what would offer the best protection. A non-medical grade cloth mask offers only partial protection, but fabrics that are natural, soft, dense and breathable are most effective. I chose a fitted design that cups the nose and the chin, used cotton poplin lined with cotton jersey, attached extra-long ties, and left the sides unfinished for additional layers to be slipped inside. The sewing had lots of starts and stops, weighed down by sadness.

Friends have received the masks, shared selfies, and been wearing them for walks to the drugstore and through the park, which pleases me. They offer some protection. They signal social distancing. And they show that the wearer is cherished.

Fu Face Mask Pattern from Free Sewing, to be distributed freely.

April 10, 2020 by Nalina Moses

DRESS WHITES

An installation at The Met recreates a closet from the Greenwich Village studio apartment of Sara Berman. Berman was born in 1920 in Belarus, emigrated to Palestine in 1940, and then to New York in 1953. From 1982 until her death in 2004, she stored her her all-white wardrobe, as well as other loose possessions, in a single walk-in closet, on two hangbars and six rows of narrow wood shelves. Her wardrobe consisted of: ten or so pairs of trousers, twenty or so shirts, ten or so sweaters, stacks of folded socks and underclothes, two wool scarves, two wool caps, one pair of gloves, a cotton bathrobe, three plastic wristwatches and, on the floor, seven pairs of flats with their toes pointed outwards. The housewares stored inside include: linens, towels, an iron, a globe, a white wood serving tray, a steel casserole, a set of painted ceramic mugs, a small stack of letters, and about a dozen books.

All these things are fine and lovingly cared for, but they are not luxurious, and they are not sentimental. They are remarkable instead because Berman selected and displayed them with such care. Stacks of tshirts and underpants are folded precisely, as if for sale, each pile sitting an inch away from the next. Shirts are ironed and buttoned, facing front, with an inch left between each hanger. The things contained in this closet, shockingly few in number for a contemporary American, are all of what Sara Berman needs.

Berman’s closet isn’t monastic; it offers its own kind of opulence. With the pieces inside it’s possible to craft a great number of ensembles, spanning seasons and occasions. Her closet might be as rich in fashion possibilities as Nan Kempner’s famously overstuffed ones. A small photograph of her on the gallery wall shows her in white coat, shirt and trousers, with a mens striped necktie, looking naturally, elegantly and eccentrically chic. This closet, filled with her personal effects, could have been understood as a memorial. Instead it speaks, strongly, to her love for herself and her love for her life.

November 26, 2017 by Nalina Moses

WHEN LESS IS MORE IS NO LONGER ENOUGH

I wonder how English architect John Pawson feels about the transformation of his most iconic project, the Calvin Klein flagship on Madison Avenue, at the hands of brand creative director Raf Simons and artist Sterling Ruby. The city’s most admired minimalist interior has become a riotous retail playhouse. Grids of construction scaffolding and stage lights have been inserted into the wide-open sales floors, beige wall-to-wall carpeting has been laid over the polished concrete floors, and brightly-colored formica blocks and cylinders have replaced the low, altar-like stone and wood plinths. Most dramatically, the interiors throughout have been painted a screaming canary yellow. When seen from across Madison Avenue at dusk, the stately limestone building’s windows gleam demonically.

It’s an audacious rebranding, an attempt to lure a younger, hipper customer and to bring the store’s architecture in step with Simons’ fevered pop culture imagination. This season’s clothes, separates with clean silhouettes executed in vernacular fabrics (denim, houndstooth, plastic, lace) with bold graphic details (racing stripes, appliques, feathers), and paired with structured accessories (cowboy boots, boxy clutches, doctors bags), have a fresh, funky feeling, like costumes for space age hippies. The new stores gives them a suitable stageset.

But I can’t help but remember the old store. It takes a lot of skill, in both design and construction, to execute a convincing minimalist interior, and Pawson’s was thrillingly austere. The floors seemed endless and seamless, light fittings and hardware were brilliantly concealed, the store’s narrow staircase was tucked between two full-height piers, and daylight washed over everything, highlighting the soft finishes. This was a Madison Avenue flagship store that didn’t try to entertain an off-the-sidewalk customer; it was a temple to restraint.

The cultural pendulum is swinging now from principle to feeling, from monochrome to color, from luxury to vulgarity. But I wonder if defacing every surface of the old store was the best strategy. The connecting stair, whose treads have been covered in black enamel, still surprises with its narrow proportions and mysteriously slow reveal of the second floor. Its slender square steel handrail, painted yellow, remains singularly elegant. The bright colors and street savvy of the new design catch the eye but don’t hold the imagination for long. When viewed from the mezzanine, the web of scaffolding, strings of lights, and toy-like props on the ground floor feel like party decorations. The architecture of the old store – its high walls, open floors and slowly unfolding views – quietly reasserts itself.

Image courtesy of Calvin Klein.

November 11, 2017 by Nalina Moses