There weren’t many men visiting Women Dressing Women, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit about female designers throughout modern history. It was as if all the ladies in attendance were huddled together like dads outside the Forever 21 fitting room during back-to-school shopping season, checking their boyfriends or husbands at the door.
Our situation was better in this regard. It was like a screening of the Barbie movie at the Met’s Costume Institute last week afternoon. I’ve seen people of various races, ages, and body types collectively scream at the original Chanel little black dress. Standing in front of a sexy, sheer, white Tory Burch dress, I nodded when a woman turned to me and said, “I need this for my wedding.” Nearby, a twentysomething was complimenting another on his Telfar moccasins. When two elderly women admired Norma Kamali’s parachute dress, a young mother offered to take a photo in front of the dress.
At times the pop feminist vibe among the guests felt a little too sweet, and the tone of the exhibition felt too self-congratulatory. This is the Met’s first exhibition devoted solely to women’s work, the New York Times reported. It’s hilariously overdue. But I couldn’t help but smile as I watched a makeshift community form among the clothes. People who appreciate clothes form an instant bond with each other: We live for the adrenaline rush that comes from complimenting a stranger’s outfit in a restaurant bathroom or at a crowded party. These moments are why I maintain my volatile love affair with an art form that makes me feel like complete shit one day and on top of the world the next.
So if you’re looking to turn off the cynical part of your brain (or the part of your brain that’s skeptical of cults), Women Dressing Women is a win. There are works by more than 70 female designers from the early 20th century, and every single one of them is gorgeous. As you wander through the exhibition, you’ll find flapper suits from the 1920s, work clothes from the 1940s, overalls from the 60s and 70s, strong shoulders from the 80s, skintight slip dresses from the 90s, and pieces from this year’s catwalks. Their lack of fashion knowledge is one of the driving forces behind Women Dressing Women, which aims to celebrate designers who are often uncredited for their contributions to culture.
Some of the examples are very serious. Ann Lowe, a black American designer, designed Jackie Kennedy’s era-defining wedding dress, but her name wasn’t attached to it until years later. According to the Washington Post, Lowe faced several insults while doing her job: While delivering the dress to the wedding party in Newport, Rhode Island, she was told to go through a service entrance. She refused; Lowe said the dress either went through the front door or made its way back to New York. Another of Lowe’s creations, a cute white empire-waist dress with pink appliqués, earns a prominent place in the Dressing Women collection.
A few steps away from Lowe’s piece is the Delphos dress, a finely pleated silk garment introduced in the early years of the 20th century and designed to be worn without underwear; This is a scandalous suggestion for its time. The dress was an immediate hit; its success was attributed to and benefited Mariano Fortuny; though his wife, Henriette Negrin Fortuny, designed it.
Generation Z can appreciate the story of Elizabeth Hawes, one of the best-known designers of the 1930s who criticized the industry’s excesses and was the first to launch a genderless clothing campaign; She believed that men should wear skirts and women should wear trousers. (Disillusioned with her career, Hawes left design and became a United Auto Workers organizer…where she also encountered widespread gender discrimination.)
You don’t have to be a historian to compare Hawes’s work to that of Hillary Taymour, the woman behind today’s eco-conscious clothing brand Collina Strada, known for her inclusive spirit and resolutely fun clothes. The lacy, multicolored printed bodysuit on display at the exhibition that Taymour made for black transgender and disabled model Aaron Philip would certainly make Hawes smile. So is the pleated mini dress inspired by the Congolese flag, designed by Anifa Mvuemba of Beyoncé-approved body-hugging knitwear designer Hanifa.
Women Who Dressed Women is a comprehensive and sometimes quite inspiring look into the past. It’s doing an important job of setting the historical record straight (and reminding TikTok-era activists that dismantling the gender binary didn’t start with their generation). I wish he had more ambitious dreams for the future.
When I say I love fashion, I mean the clothes, not the industry. We know that the business behind the art is run by rich, white, conglomerate guys who are completely unaware of most of the people who buy the clothes. Women Dressing Women will not change the industry. Given that it is produced by the Met (and backed by Morgan Stanley, which is undoubtedly a fan of the corporate status quo), there is a tendency to define feminism as the attainment of power and influence for women.
But the most creative designers in the exhibition wanted to break the system, not be part of it. Vivienne Westwood never wavered from her punk ethos, even as she rose through the industry’s ranks. The British designer was openly anti-capitalist and demonstrated for Extinction Rebellion until his death last year at the age of 81. It could be argued that Westwood’s contemporary Katharine Hamnett created the modern slogan T-shirt, selling anti-war and anti-Margaret Thatcher tops. Statements in the 1980s. The collection includes Hamnett’s pro-disarmament “Survive ’85” T-shirt.
Although these women did not garner the same attention as the top male designers of the era (Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein are all household names), they used their fame to advocate for change. This is more revolutionary than accepting a senior job at one of the big companies like LVMH or Kering; both are still run by French white men, fashion’s favorite demographic.
Likewise, any institution celebrating Karl Lagerfeld the year he opened his first all-female exhibition deserves skepticism. Mellissa Huber, co-curator of Women Dressing Women, worked on this year’s Met Gala, which was dedicated to Chanel’s late creative director. Despite being a misogynist who promoted fashion’s shameful tradition of thin worship and exploitation of models, the Met has produced a mostly uncritical exhibition that serves as a shrine to the man. Are our institutions finally celebrating women because it’s right or because it’s trendy? (The original launch of Women Dressing Women was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in America; Covid delayed that. That would still be too late.)
Still, I’m hopeful that Women Dressing Women will leave visitors unable to help but soak up her daring enthusiasm as they rummage through the clothes. You don’t need to work in fashion to appreciate this. If you’re wearing clothes, it’s worth learning about the origins of the style. If every piece in the collection has a story (and most do; please read the wall text!), that story is only made richer by the fact that the piece is worn by a woman who has her own reasons for getting dressed in the morning.
When I walked out of the Costume Institute, I finally saw a man enter the exhibit. He was young, and I guessed he was a design student at Parsons or FIT, one of the New York fashion schools. (His all-black outfit and graying eyebrows gave it away.) He looked serious and was carrying a notebook in his hand. It was obvious he planned to take notes.