The Bite Magazine - Autmn/Winter 2020 - Issue 28

biteexhibition ing The World of Balenciaga in 1973; The Glory of Russian Cos- tume in 1976; and Vanity Fair in 1977. In the last several years, the Costume Institute has present- ed interesting themes in their annual exhibitions. Last year, Camp: Notes on Fashion explored the origins of the camp aes- thetic and how it has evolved from a place of marginality to be- come an important influence on mainstream culture. In 2018, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination focused on fashion and medieval art and also examined fashion’s on- going engagement with the devotional practices and traditions of Catholicism. In 2017, the Costume Institute examined designer Rei Ka- wakubo’s fascination with interstitially or the space between boundaries. The year before that, Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion explored how the department has honed its collect- ing strategy to amass masterworks of the highest aesthetic and technical quality. In 2015, China: Through The Looking Glass looked at the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fash- ion and how China has fuelled the fashionable imagination for centuries. For 2020, the About Time: Fashion and Duration exhibition on until 7th February 2021 at The Met Fifth Avenue traces a century and a half of fashion, from 1870 to the present, along a disruptive timeline, on the occasion of The Met’s 150th an- niversary. To demonstrate the theme of this exciting and cel- ebratory exhibition, the institute adopted French philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of la durée (duration) and explores how clothes generate temporal associations that conflate past, present, and future. As you walk through this fascinating space admiring the en- sembles on display, you will hear excerpts from writer Virgin- ia Woolf ’s 1928 book Orlando: A Biography, who serves as a ‘ghost narrator’ in this exhibition. The three passages based on the concept of ‘time’ read by actresses Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore have a kind of eerie echoing ambi- ence but give you a moment to contemplate the deep meaning of the words in these passages. The exhibition is divided between two adjacent galleries fabri- cated as enormous clock faces and organised around the prin- ciple of 60 minutes of fashion. Each minute features a pair of garments, with a total of 60 ensembles; the primary work rep- resents the linear nature of the style and the secondary work its cyclical character. It impresses upon Bergson’s concept of duration that time exists as a continuous flow, and the rela- tionship between the past and present being coexistent, rather than successive. Charles Frederick Worth’s 1877 Afternoon Dress in black silk faille trimmed with black silk satin is paired with Alexander McQueen’s 1995 Bumster Skirt, also made from black silk faille. Worth introduced the princess line in 1876, a one-piece dress named after Princess Alexander of Denmark without a horizontal waist seam, typifying the hourglass contour in vogue between 1876 and 1881. Its vertical seaming extends uninterrupted from the shoulder to the skirt to create an ex- tremely formfitting, long-waisted silhouette. Alexander McQueen radically reinterpreted the princess line in his ‘Bumster’ trousers and skirts, which were cut outra- geously low on the hips, to reveal the lower back and upper buttocks. Like the princess silhouette, the extreme cut of the ‘Bumster’ created the illusion of an elongated torso. Of the de- sign, McQueen said, “To me, that part of the body - not so much the buttocks, but the bottom of the spine - that’s the most erotic part of anyone’s body, man or woman.” Another design by Charles Frederick Worth, the 1885 Walking Dress in black silk velvet trimmed with black chenille fringe, saw him reintroduce the bustle shape in the early 1880s to in- crease France’s luxury textile production, which had declined during the slim princess line era. The new bustle was volumi- nous, reaching its greatest extension by 1885. In this dress, the heavy silk velvet is gathered in generous folds that create fur- ther volume around the bustle, supporting the skirt drapery. This dress is coupled with Yohji Yamamoto’s black wool twill coat from 1986, which has a cutaway at the back to reveal ethe- real pouffes of nylon tulle reminiscent of the exaggerated bus- tle of the 1880s. The woollen overcoats with varying lengths and extensions in a range of colours from red to black to white had the pouffes emerge like explosions of cotton candy. The back of this coat is cut with several layers of cloth that enhance its exuberant extension. Gabrielle Chanel’s 1927 black wool jersey and silk satin dress known as the ‘little black dress’ demonstrated a balance be- tween formality and informality, and also severity and soft- ness. Its sportif attitude was conveyed by the loose bodice, box-pleated skirt, and jaunty belt with metal hardware. In Vir- gil Abloh’s 2018 revival of Chanel’s iconic design, the phrase ‘little black dress’ appears in quotation marks. The designer’s use of quoted text in the Helvetica typeface became an Off- White trademark. In the mid to late 1930s, evening suits consisting of a decora- tive jacket and a long skirt or dress became fashionable. Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1938 black silk velvet evening jacket embroi- dered with mirrors, clear plastic beads, gold metal strip, and gold sequins was inspired by the salons of war and peace in the Hall of Mirror in Versailles. Yves Saint Laurent reprised this motif in his 1978 Broken Mirror ensemble which had an expansive mirror on the back of the jacket with silver foil frac- tured with crystals and gold strip. The second half of the exhibition is a series of sixty inter- ruptions or disruptions that pre or post-date the fashions in the first timeline but relate to them in terms of shape, motif, material, technique or decoration. In the early 1930s, zipper closures were introduced into fashionable clothing, sewn dis- creetly into a garment’s side or back, replacing hooks and eyes. Elsa Schiaparelli deployed zips as oversized colourful decora- tive devices, while Charles James spiralled them around the body to facilitate undress. In Rudi Gernreich’s 1968 black wool jersey mini dress, a sil- ver zipper with a conspicuous ring pull originated at the cen- tre-back neckline, wraps around the body, and finishes at the hem. The zipper not only served as a modernist ornament but it also drew attention to the potential for speedily remov- ing the garment. Similarly, the spiralling zipper on Azzedine Alaïa’s 2003 black wool jersey floor-length dress, became a