Met Exhibit: Galliano is not an 18th Century Dressmaker

As avowed (or more accurately, mentioned off-the-cuff) last week, I visited the Met’s Anglomania exhibit and, as expected, the boyfriend reluctantly came along, bitching and whining the whole time since the 4/5 wasn’t running and we had to take the 6 all the way up to 77th street, making every local stop along the way. He put a one hour time constraint on our visit, which was ample time to tour the exhibit, try to teach him something about couture, stop to look at a few pieces of Flemish art on the second floor of the Met and visit the rooftop terrace.

Observations about the Exhibit:
The exhibit is set up as a juxtaposition of old world British style (tradition) and modern, fashion forward British designs (transgression) to demonstrate the evolution of one through the influence of the other. Most of the museum visitors, who were above your average fanny pack wearing tourist set, didn’t get it. I overheard patrons make comments like, “Wow, its amazing that they were able to make dresses like that back in the 1800s,” while looking at pieces from John Galliano’s 1994 Princess Lucretia collection. One genuinely confused woman was thankful when I explained the concept to her, saying that she thought Hussein Chalayan’s rag-picker dresses (2002) would have been remarkably ahead of their time. Sigh.

The designs were displayed on mannequins as part of a larger installation of English furniture and art, similar to the set up of a tour of a European palace or estate. I wanted to get closer and examine the fabric and garment construction, but I couldn’t because most of the designs were cordoned off in their artificial settings.

The most interesting installation was the “Lansdowne Room’s Gentlemen’s Club,” mostly because of the mohawk made of cigarettes and the mannequin dog in leather and chains.

If you can’t make it over to the exhibit, the pictures on Style.com are a very good approximation of the experience (the lighting is muted and space is small, sometimes the pictures provide greater up-close detail than what you can see in person).

The view from the roof of the Met is worth the fifteen minutes we spend wandering around the first floor, receiving conflicting directions from museum attendants in every gallery, until we finally stumbled upon the elusive elevator that is the only access point to the roof.

Posted by Ali @ 7:45 am

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