TWO MORE FASHION-ART EXHIBITS
Currently on view:
- "Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair": This Museum of Design Atlanta exhibit chronicles the story of Ebony and Jet magazine publisher Eunice Johnson's half-century quest to redefine beauty and style while using high fashion to empower African-Americans.
The installation features 40 garments from Ebony Fashion Fair, which visited 180 cities from 1958 through 2009, and Johnson’s personal wardrobe, along with accessories, archival photographs and videos.
Read an AJC preview of the exhibit on our subscriber site, MyAJC.com.
Through Jan. 4. $10; $8 seniors, military and educators; $5 ages 6-17 and college students. 1315 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-979-6455. www.museumofdesign.org.
- "Emilio Pucci in America": The late Italian designer briefly studied horticulture at the University of Georgia in 1935, and this exhibit at UGA's Georgia Museum of Art celebrates his fashion world ascension in his 100th birthday year. Especially notable amid all the gowns, lingerie, sportswear and swimwear are his groovy-sexy 1960s flight attendant uniforms for Braniff Airlines.
Through Feb. 1. Free. 90 Carlton St., Athens. 1-706-542-4662, www.georgiamuseum.org.
If the trend of turning fashion design into the topic of art exhibitions keeps up, we’ll soon be air kissing each other every time we step lively into a museum.
The High Museum of Art is the latest to embrace the runaway popularity of runway culture with its recent announcement that it will import a major exhibition of cutting-edge Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen.
Opening next November, "Iris van Herpen" will mark the first time the Atlanta museum has tried on haute couture for size. The High also will become the first U.S. museum to present a major show by van Herpen, before the exhibit visits other stops on these shores.
If new to the American museum world, the designer already is, at 30, one of the fashion world’s blazing stars. Style trendsetters including Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Bjork have donned her daring futuristic clothes, and her lines have been modeled on Amsterdam, London and Paris runways.
The High is hardly the only museum lining up to be fabulously fashionable.
Just a few stiletto strides across Peachtree Street, the Museum of Design Atlanta is taking a loving look back at an important 20th century fashion force in the exhibit “Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair.” And the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens is making transcontinental connections with its own show of style, “Emilio Pucci in America.”
Fashion is not a new topic for museums, but interest has ramped up since New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art drew more than 660,000 visitors over the three-month run of “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” The 2011 retrospective of the late British fashion designer and couturier rocketed into the Met’s Top 10 draws of all time.
"The McQueen show was an amazing show, but there were amazing shows that married fashion with contemporary art and design before that," High decorative arts and design curator Sarah Schleuning said. "The McQueen show just had huge attendance figures that made everyone excited."
Van Herpen, it turns out, got her professional start working for McQueen’s design empire.
“For me it was really an eye-opener, how much time it actually takes to make a beautiful garment,” the Dutch designer said in a recent Interview magazine story. “In the academy, I really focused on ideas, and during my internship I started realizing the whole making process. In my work today, I think my process of making something is as important — or maybe even more important — than the final result.”
That sensibility is precisely what attracted Schleuning to van Herpen as a potential subject.
The designer is known for interweaving traditional handwork with of-the-moment 3D-printing technology, computer modeling and engraving. She has collaborated with architects, engineers and digital design specialists. Her sculptural designs often feature unusual materials such as magnets, umbrella ribs and synthetic boat rigging.
“I was really interested in (focusing on) somebody who was an incredible maker and thinker,” the curator said. “And so her work was so compelling to me because she does use 3D printing and all these incredible technologies, but not just to make a dress that’s 3D printed. She does it because she has a vision that she hasn’t been able to (complete) and she uses the technology to finally make it.”
“Iris van Herpen” will feature will feature 45 outfits selected from 15 collections she designed for 2008 through 2015.
The exhibit significantly expands and updates a 2012 exhibit organized by the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. Newly added are 18 pieces from the designer's six most recent lines and a selection of her shoe designs in collaboration with United Nude, the fashion-forward company launched by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and British shoemaker Galahad Clark.
Schleuning believes the show, co-organized with the Groninger, forms a “natural counterpoint” to “Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas,” the High’s hit summer display of edge-pushing concept cars. On an extended run through May 2016, the fashion exhibit similarly will probe the creative impulse and problem solving that fuel design, albeit to produce a very different final product.
Van Herpen’s couture will be displayed on custom mannequins and accompanied by music and videos from her runway shows.
A catwalk isn’t necessary to get the full impact, Schleuning said.
“The great thing to me about these (pieces) is they’re amazing on the runway but they’re incredible in person,” she said. “When you are up close, the craftsmanship and the shapes are incredible.”
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