review of MFA fashion show... criticism by the author is what i expected from the show
from boston.com
Surface thrills
It's dramatic, certainly, but the MFA's 'Fashion Show' is a definite example of style over substance
By Ken Johnson, Globe Staff | November 12, 2006
The cartoonishly erotic women's outfits in Christian Dior's new haute couture collection invite us to indulge our inner Marquis de Sade. Created by Dior's head designer , John Galliano , and inspired by the Johnny Depp movie "The Libertine," the dresses and suits update 18th - century French styles with super-wide belts, big collars and shoulders, exposed lingerie, and, on one billowing red leather dress, a skeleton embroidered in black.
In "Fashion Show: Paris Collections 2006," the new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, mannequins wearing these garments pose on a mirrored stage in lurid theatrical light. Throbbing music fills the air and a video of tall, sultry women modeling the clothes on a Paris runway plays on a wall next to the tableau.
Among the most striking displays in "Fashion Show," the Galliano vision is certainly seductive. But like costumes for a sexed-up Broadway production of "Les Miserables," the clothes look flagrantly expensive, but the thrills are cheap.
Do I sound cranky? While I'm an art critic, I'm not uninterested in fashion, although people who know how I dress may be surprised to hear that. I like to look at fancy boutique windows and to speculate about how changes in styles reflect changes in society. And I'm not all that troubled by the idea of Boston's premiere art institution turning major exhibition space over to purveyors of high-end consumer goods. I sort of like the chutzpah.
So it's not because I'm against fashion that I find the MFA's show disappointing. It's because once the novelty wears off, it's not a very deeply moving or thought-provoking exhibit. Like the Dior display, it excites for a moment and then leaves you flat.
Fashion sells, however -- better than art does -- and it will, no doubt, sell a lot of tickets for the MFA. Organized by Pamela Parmal, the museum's curator of textile and fashion arts, "Fashion Show" presents brand new creations from 10 famous designers who regularly show their wares in Paris, and it is a captivating spectacle. At the level of sheer materiality, the show delivers. Silks and satins, velvets and wools, taffeta, organza, raccoon fur, patent leather, white mongolian lamb, Chantilly lace, ostrich feathers: The ways these materials are colored, textured , and put together throughout the show makes for a hedonistic dream come true for anyone into the craft of fine clothes-making.
There are willfully eccentric materials, too: Maison Martin Margiela offers vests made from old leather sandal straps. And Hussein Chalayan has created body-hugging party dresses that look normal until you notice the massive leather collars resembling the armrests of old, overstuffed armchairs, and other details evoking the padded leather interiors of antique cars.
By taking collections right off the 2006 Paris runways, the MFA throws a challenge to people who think fashion is OK only if it's approached with scholarly sobriety. With this exhibition, the white-hot aura of commercialism practically blinds you to whatever other purposes "Fashion Show" might be supposed to serve.
And that's the problem. Given fashion's already huge influence on contemporary consciousness, we don't need just to see more of it at closer range, even if many are happy to be ravished. What we need is distance -- and the curatorial imagination to help us see, think, and feel differently about fashion and its meanings.
An exhibition about contemporary fashion might examine the craft and processes by which high - style clothes are created, from rough sketches to finished products. It could study the broader context of visual culture in which fashion is embedded by bringing in related objects from fine art and film. It could focus on themes like the feminine and the masculine or the relationship between aesthetics and functionality. It could probe the sociology and economics of the fashion industry and find out how broader historical circumstances affect its products. It could ask, "What makes some clothes fashionable and others not?"
The MFA show does none of these things. It offers no illuminating interpretation of contemporary fashion beyond dividing the contents between haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. (For those not up on their "Project Runway" episodes, haute couture clothes are custom-fitted, made by hand and can cost more than $200,000. Ready-to-wear clothes are produced by modern manufacturing methods in standard sizes, and they are more affordable.)
The implication is that like works of art, these garments can stand on their own and be admired like paintings and sculptures. Certainly, Yohji Yamamoto's ready-to-wear collection comes close. His voluminous women's outfits are made to resemble businessmen's suits but with absurdly exaggerated or misplaced legs, cuffs, sleeves , and other elements. They wittily comment on gender roles, but they are also drop-dead elegant.
With their oversize , rounded jackets made of white goat and lamb fur, bulbous black leather skirts , and meticulously realized details of cutting and stitching, Azzedine Alaïa's exactingly formalist designs also persuasively blur the line between clothing and sculpture. They are extraordinarily luxurious, but subtly comical and vaguely futuristic, too, like costumes for a new Woody Allen sci-fi film.
Some clothes, however, don't aspire to be more than just very fine clothes. The slim, handsome, ready-to-wear pantsuits by Rochas and filmy, ultra-feminine gowns by Valentino, Chanel, and Christian Lacroix are positively demure compared to Galliano's clothes for Dior. They're also less memorable.
Other collections that try to be artistically original don't go far enough. The way Chalayan conflates clothes, furniture, and cars may sound provocative, but his pieces shy away from more surrealistically extreme possibilities of combining the erotic and the mechanical.
Viktor & Rolf, who have earned a reputation for daring invention, also disappoint. Their collection is based on 1950s prototypes: beige trench coats with ruffled edges and non-functional extra belts and belt loops, for example, and cocktail party dresses partly or wholly metallicized as though by a Midas with a silver touch. The clothes are suave, but the retro irony is old hat.
For Maison Martin Margiela, conventional tastefulness is beside the point. Their pieces are assembled from materials found in second hand stores, flea markets, and garage sales; vests are made of linked bottle caps and old playing cards, a pair of pants from recycled Swiss army satchels. Compared to assemblages produced by contemporary artists like Jessica Stockholder, who uses tacky, colorful new store - bought materials in her unwieldy constructions, or Damien Hirst, who has covered canvases with dead flies, they are not very shocking.
Museum wall labels give some biographical and descriptive information, but they are overshadowed by larger blocks of text provided by the designers, almost all of which are inanely promotional. "RED IS THE NEW LIBERTINE," reads a Christian Dior manifesto all in capital letters. "PLATINUM IS THE NEW MARIE- ANTOINETTE / LEATHER IS THE NEW LUXURY / VEILING IS THE NEW SEDUCTION / DIOR IS THE NEW EROTICA."
The exhibition catalog is not much help. It includes Parmal's long essay on the 400 - year history of Paris as a center of fashion, and another about the fashion industry in Paris since the middle of the 20th century by Didier Grumbach, who is identified as president of the French Fashion Federation , an industry group. This is not where to look for independent critical insight into the garments on display.
Was getting into bed with the Paris fashion juggernaut worthwhile? It might have been had the MFA done more than just roll over and let the designers have their way.
I guess I'll be shelling out the $27 to go see it.
they've been denying that for ages...and sometimes they even reintroduce stuff from years ago...
