Suzy's review from nytimes.com
I'll be visiting the exhibit as I always do, but honestly it sounds like it's going to be a letdown. I'm really not expecting too much. Basically it just sounds like a walk through post-war fashion history as far as the actual "costume" element is concerned. I could see doing this exhibit in the winter, when the Met sometimes does smaller Costume Institute exhibits, but as the "main event" I still don't see the point.An Ode to the Shooting Stars of Beauty
By SUZY MENKES
Published: May 4, 2009
Maxime de la Falaise — one of the great icons of 20th-century fashion, a muse to Elsa Schiaparelli and a friend of Yves Saint Laurent — died last week. And her departure could not have come at a more poignant moment: the opening of an exhibition in New York about the fashion model as muse.
This case study, which is set to open Wednesday at the Metropolitan Museum, could be seen not just as a celebration for the magazine icons — but also as a requiem, now that celebrity images have all but effaced the models. There will surely be a new generation of women who capture a cultural moment, just as the greyhound sophisticates of the golden era of haute couture were eclipsed by the child-woman fauns, personified by Twiggy, and ultimately by the Amazonian supermodels.
But looking at the elegant images on glossy covers that frame striking installations — from 1950s glamour to 1990s grunge — it is hard to believe that the Internet age will produce quite the same shooting stars of beauty.
Two gargantuan cut-out elephants and a model, arms outstretched in her slender column of a dress — open “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion.” This is a Hollywood interpretation of the famous 1955 Richard Avedon photograph of “Dovina with Elephants” for Harper’s Bazaar.
At the end of the first gallery is the original black and white Avedon photograph — prescient in that it introduced both new postwar fashion photography and a Dior gown designed by the fledgling Yves Saint Laurent. Other models of that period, photographed by Avedon, Horst P. Horst and Irving Penn, include Suzy Parker and the platinum-blonde Sunny Harnett, looking more movie star than model as she shows off a draped dress among gaming tables.
Her voluptuous figure is replicated by a mannequin — an example of how the exhibition is brought vibrantly to life by John Myhre, the Oscar-winning production designer of movies such as “Dreamgirls” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.” He says that his idea was to bring in “a little cinematic magic and wonder.”
Other movie-set effects include a mannequin of the model/muse Peggy Moffitt, posing topless in a 1964 Rudi Gernreich swimsuit; a sculpture of Brooke Shields in the original Calvin Klein jeans that she supposedly wore over bare flesh; or models chilling out at Studio 54, the YSL clan in their Russian peasant dresses.
The exhibition was curated by Harold Koda of the Costume Institute and Kohle Yohannan, a cultural historian and inspiration behind the joint book on the history of models, with an image of Linda Evangelista, applying lipstick in front of a mirror, as the cover.
“I did the clothes,” said Mr. Koda, referring to the 70 outfits on display, especially haute couture gowns that are used to replicate group shots. These vignettes punctuate fashion history, starting with the famous 1948 group photograph by Cecil Beaton of models in Charles James ball gowns. Another way of adding visual energy to static displays is when Dior and Balenciaga outfits are shown against a backdrop of Audrey Hepburn in the movie “Funny Face.”
What does not quite come across is how much these early models, although famous enough when they married an aristocrat and moved into high society, were still subsumed by the clothes. The magazines were showing what they wore, not emphasizing who they were.
The 1950s models, even when only 18, were also presented very much as women, not girls. But then came a sudden and dramatic change, what Mr. Yohannan calls the “youthquake” and “goodbye to the reign of sophistication.” As Parisian couture and the strains of “C’est Si Bon” fade away, giant aluminium dresses made for the satirical 1966 movie “Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?” dominate the large gallery.
Twiggy and Veruschka, as well as the first famous African/American model Donyale Luna, introduce an androgynous or adolescent concept to modeling. Graphic mini-dresses from Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne and the early, iconoclastic Saint Laurent expose thighs and long legs in images that vibrate with the 1960s sexual revolution.
“Her sexuality and beauty leaps off the page,” says Yohannan, referring to the way the British model Jean Shrimpton moves from showing womanly grace to sexually charged legs.
The exhibition remains a glossy fairyland, with no hint of the sad end of models who lived fast and died young. Instead, we see only in their prime Penelope Tree, two-dimensional as an Andy Warhol “Factory” product, or the smoldering Janet Dickinson. Helmut Newton’s glamorous decadence captures a more edgy vision from the 1970s.
The exhibition reaches its apogee with the supermodels of the 1980s and especially its “trinity” of Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. Once again, it is as a collective group that they make an impact, with Peter Lindbergh’s Versace image of bikers — long legs under short skirts — as the essence of female empowerment.
Significantly, those “supers” who hit the newsstand in the 1980s, have shown survival almost as impressive as Lisa Fonssagrives, wife of Irving Penn, whose career spanned two decades from the mid-1930s to 1950s.
The 1990s brought grunge-graffiti on the walls, messy clothes and “Nirvana” on the soundtrack. That period was marked by “alternative” models like the angular Kristen McMenamy or “the waif,” identified as Kate Moss and described by Yohannan as “the face of Generation X.” But the exhibition does not bring out the beauty of the British model’s feline face or the lasting celebrity of a woman who is the chair of the Costume Institute benefit that took place on Monday, along with Justin Timberlake, the Vogue editor Anna Wintour and the exhibition’s sponsor, Marc Jacobs.
Koda recalls Karl Lagerfeld’s comment that what makes a model is “imperfection.” The curators might have introduced the concept of models of character, showing Claudia Schiffer’s cheeky smile or the temperamental Naomi Campbell glamour. But, like models themselves in the late 1990s, the exhibition fades away, showing a line-up of clothes from the Helmut Lang minimalist era on faceless mannequins and the corporate advertising campaigns.
What would have transformed this show from being not just entertaining and interesting, but profound? By turning attention almost entirely on the models, it denies the reality of a model’s image as a collaborative construction, with editor, photographer and designer working together to mold a new “face.” But showing how the cocktail of beauty is concocted might have shed too much light on the ephemeral magic of the model and muse.
