Mother's Day at the Brooklyn Museum

Yesterday, was Mothers' Day. My husband wanted to spend time with me doing something fun, but he had work due and needed to put in several hours of work. My youngest had homework.

I decided to take the opportunity to visit The Brooklyn Museum and see the newly opened exhibit American High Style.

The exhibit has been launched to mark the new partnership between the Brooklyn Museum's extensive fashion collection and the Metropolitan Museum's Costume institute.

Since it was Sunday, and Mothers' Day I thought that the Brooklyn Museum would be far less crazed than the Met. So, I set out for Brooklyn with a good book to read on the subway to keep me company.

The exhibit opens with a selection of Worth dresses, all embellished like wedding cakes. I really wasn't in the mood for that level of frou-frou so i didn't look all that closely.

I did, however notice a lovely Paquin wedding dress from around the turn of the last century. The outer layer of the dress was made out of a sheer dotted Swiss cotton. Bebeath the sheer fabric, white satin ribbons were attached at the waist and hung loose until the hem. The dress had further under layers of petticoat. I'm sure the ribbons looked great as the bride walked. It's a detail worth thinking about playing with.

One dress I particularly loved was this 1925 dress by Suzanne Talbott. I had never heard of her. I love how the fabric that makes up the back of the dress is tacked to the shoulder creating a dramatic drape that can be worn trailing behind the wearer or can be slipped over your right arm and turned into a wrap.

Several Schiaparelli dresses were in display as well. There was a pair of 1940's blue wool crepe suits with charming buttons. A slim white twill coat with empty bullet casings as buttons.

The garment that really caught my imagination was a beach dress that was essentially two differently colored half dresses. Each half dress wrapped and tied around the opposite side of the body. the wearer could decide which color dominated the look by reversing the dresses. The ensemble came with a reversible cardigan. I may play with this idea and make a couple of two sided wrap dresses.

A section of the exhibit was devoted to women designers. The work of the women designers tended to be less flashy than the garments designed by men, but more wearable and timeless. It was chilly enough to wear the Claire McCardle's lovely wool jersey ensemble home.

I also fell head over heels in love with Vera Maxwell's wool jersey knit ensemble. It was made up of a wrap top, , knickers or skirt and a coat. I am a big believer of garments that can go anywhere from scrubbing the floor to a fancy dinner out. Maxwell's clothing do just that in an elegant and effortless way.

Another new to me designer was Eva Hentz who designed a heart stoppingly beautiful black and white dress where faced white angles intersected their black counterparts.

Charles James' beautiful dresses are fascinating. They are on the face of it, classic ballgowns. On closer inspection they fetishize the female body in all sorts of complex ways. It is a little like discovering that your very straight laced mother is into S+M.

The exhibit is in short, totally worth a trip to Brooklyn.
I did keep wishing though that the exhibit were set up by the brilliant curators at FIT who really understand what is important about garments. They understand how to display garments so the questions a viewer has about construction can be answered with your own eyes.

I also wish that the notes describing the garments were a bit more accurate. Whoever wrote them was in love with the word tubular, even when it didn't apply. My other quibble with the show was the display of Russian headresses. I have no idea why they took them out of moth balls for the show. I think they would have worked in an exhibit on the connections between the Muslim world and Europe, but they were a head scratcher in this show.

The shoes and hats from the 1930's and 40's were wonderful and really added to the experience.

I captured the images from this post from the Brooklyn Museum site. If you click on the header for this blog entry it wil take you to the Brooklyn Museum site. There you wil be able to see some, but not all of the garments in the show.

The catalog from the show is terrific. It was an excellent early birthday gift from my mother.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

AnonymousMay 10, 2010 at 3:02 PM
Always interesting to see things through a creative seamstress's eyes. Some of today's everyday styles really lack the creativity of days gone by! All we see are jeans, and more jeans---too bad, we are capable of much better.
Thanks Sarah===

sarah in nyc

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