We’re in the thick of summer, but fall may seem like a distant prospect, but the change of season will mark a welcome turning point for two museums at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Fashion exhibitions director Rafael Brauer Gomes and other SCAD representatives previewed three fall exhibitions Wednesday morning at Mostrador at the Walker Hotel in New York. First up will be “Isabel Toledo, A Love Letter,” which opens Aug. 13 and runs through Dec. 16 at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah. The independent Cuban-American designer is best known for dressing former first lady Michelle Obama for her husband Barack’s inauguration in 2009.
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Toledo’s artist and illustrator wife, Rubin, who has supported her work since her death five years ago, did just that at Wednesday’s event. The upcoming show “brings to life how Isabel thought about design,” and those who go to the Savannah museum will feel as if they’re looking at one of her sketchbooks, she said. The walls will be covered with sketches that inspired her and quotes that inspired her as well. They’ll also find designs she personally wore and designs she found important, her wife said.
An early version of the designer’s “packing dress,” made of two circles of fabric sewn together from the 1970s, is her favorite at the show. It started as a handbag and evolved into a sleeve before becoming a dress. The name refers to the ease with which the garment can be packed for travel without the worry of ironing upon arrival. “She’s taken it through many evolutions and perfected it many times. That tells me how she thinks about design,” she said.
The Toledo show will feature Pucci models that the designer helped create, as well as his wife’s artwork and a short 10-minute film about the creative duo.
In September, model-turned-designer Imane Ayissi will open her first museum exhibition at the SCAD FASH Museum + Film in Atlanta. “Imane Ayissi, From Africa to the World,” which debuts Sept. 18, will run through Feb. 23. The Cameroon-born designer is a guest at the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Zendaya and Angela Bassett are among the celebrities Ayissi has dressed for the red carpet. Her unusual combinations include Lyon silk and hand-woven raffia from Madagascar. “She has a very interesting approach. I especially like how she mixes African fabrics from many different countries into one look,” Gomes says.
Ayissi’s unconventional use of fabrics will be particularly interesting to the many SCAD students who typically watch her shows, Gomes said.
This fall’s third show will spotlight three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell at SCAD FASH. The exhibit, which covers more than 27 films the British talent has worked on, including “Shakespeare in Love,” “The Aviator” and “The Young Victoria,” opens Oct. 11 and runs through March 16. Angels Costumes is lending some of the pieces that will appear in “Sandy Powell.” Gomes said that film companies and leading actors now understand the value of costumes and are more inclined to keep them than to reuse them or repurpose them for other productions, as some used to do. The team tried to borrow a few costumes from Robert De Niro, who “kept all the costumes from his movies.” “Renée Zellweger has a crazy archive. She’s super organized and has barcodes. They all know the importance of costumes now,” he added.
Recalling her visit to Angels with Powell and her assistant, Gomes said she likened its vastness to an airplane hangar. “There are three floors of huge shelves, almost. There are 1,800 blouses — white, purple … Such vastness can make it difficult to put together original costumes. “Then we started hunting. As we went through all the shoes, we thought, ‘This is hopeless,'” she said. “‘Velvet Goldmine’ [items] The designs were easy to find because they were so unique [aesthetically.]”
Powell also lends out a few costumes, as do distinguished collectors like Los Angeles-based Larry McQueen. “He lends out a lot of costumes [of costumes] to museums. They are intact and [are shipped] “In acid-free cans,” Gomes said.
While Powell was helping with preparations for the U.S. exhibition, he was also busy rehearsing for a live-action adaptation of the 1937 Disney animated film “Snow White,” due out next year. That included fine-tuning the looks for Emilia Faucher, the rapidly growing pre-teen actress who plays the younger version of the fictional character, Gomes said.
The Powell-based show will also feature plenty of illustrations, according to Gomes, and the Atlanta setting is key. “It should be a very strong exhibit. There’s a lot going on in the film industry in Atlanta with Tyler Perry’s studio and other studios,” he said, noting that Georgia uses tax incentives to attract more filmmakers from Los Angeles.
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