A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life.
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Two exhibits at FIT
It has been a while since I had been to the museum at FIT. I just finished a couple of project and it is time to get cracking on some new ones. So before I staple myself to the sewing machine I went out into the beautiful weather to feed my soul at FIT.
The upstairs exhibit space was showing Black Fashion Designers. It wasn't enough of a unifying concept for an exhibit, but it was an opportunity to see lots of really great garments. This Patrick Kelly dress opened the exhibit.
using the shape of tribal wear but in non traditional fabrics
Forgive me, I assumed that all of the documentation about who the designers are would be on the website. That isn't the case, I am sorry that I do not have attributions.
Awesome ombre dyed cape made out of macramed silk cording
Worn by black models in the 1970's and still chic today.
I love this deconstructed coat.
Disco era dress with mirrored discs.
Some garment played either with actual African textiles or the idea of those textiles
The face done in fringe! Amazing!
I would wear the 1973 red wrap top Scott Barrie dress in a heart beat.
This white draped and gathered dress was made by Epperson of Project Runway fame
I then made my way to the Paris Refashioned exhibit. It felt like I was going through a chic-er version of my mother's closet. So many of the garments were deeply familiar to me.My mother and her cohorts wore knock offs of these garments, though I suspect that some of my mother's friends may have worn the originals.
These two dresses began the exhibit. I remember my mother wearing a dress similar to the black one. The black and white is from the late 1950's but could have been worn as a chic dress every year since it was made. you can't see it in the photo but it is a highly textured mohair.
My mother owned (and I inherited) a charcoal grey knock off version of the white Balenciaga coat.My mother owned coats similar to the purple mohair, and I saw lots of these coats on grownups.
I remember dresses like these from my early childhood.
The gold brocade dress came with a matching swing coat. The little black shift anticipates the waistless look of the 1960's Don't you just love the jewels at the hip?
I lightened this image so you could see the great draping on the black dress. That means that you can't see the TDF embroidery on the gold and white dress as well as you might. Both these dresses were way more chic than I saw in my childhood.
I love how the exhibit designers put the dresses with the subtle cut outs together.
I remember chic young women wearing knock of versions of both the printed coat and the coat and dress outfit. Patch pockets! Dyed to match buttons!.
A back view of the printed coat and a back view of an Easter egg colored coat.
These dresses are from the early 1960's. You could have worn the black dresses until the mid 1970's. my mother wore versions of the red Miss Dior printed silk dress until the end of her life.
two coats of fabulousness.
The red pleated outfit is from 1963. The skirted outfits are what I wore all through high school.
All three are wearable today, not necessarily by me, but by a cute young someone
I would wear either of these dresses right now.
The red dress is wearable today, minus the head schmatta.
I saw women wearing versions of these dresses at bar-mitzvahs and weddings into the mid 1970's
This Pierre Cardin is wonderful. It was way racier than anything people in the circles i hung out in wore.
Again, clothing from the early 1960's that became the uniform from women into the mid 1970's
Just one small section of dresses looked locked into ther time line.
MAM you would have loved this show. One of the things that makes this show different than so many shows about fashion is that this is the wearable stuff, not the outrageous that pushed the limits but the clothing that real people wore. I am sure that if you went through this show it would have reminded you of favorite garment from the era.
In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born, Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...
I know that it has been a while since I posted. We went to Boston last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a family friend. I may post about the weekend in a different post. Two disparate topics in one post is all I can manage today. Yesterday was a busy day and filled with big emotions. We began the day at the funeral of a young man who was a Hebrew School classmate of my older son's. I had such fond, fond memories of the sweet, funny, kind and exceptionally bright young man who also had terrible struggles. I kept remembering the young man both as a delightful child full of promise and the suffering that he and his family have been through for the past many years. I sat with two women whose children attended preschool with the young man. We three held one another in our sorrow. Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. My husband is not someone who wants things. When we were at Bingo---the kosher version of Costco I spotted a large package of ste...
Today, an oponion piece in the Wall Street Journal had the headline These Days, It All Feels Like Yesterday. It seemed a perfect way to sum up how we live our lives these days. I have been far more willing during this Covid time to do the sort of slow going work that I tend to avoid like the plague during normal times. I have been working away on Max's tallit. I had decided to get the lettering on the atara in a new to me way. Actually, to be completely honest, this is a method I have read about since I was a kid. You draw the design on a bit of what is called "waste fabric". Then you embroider the design and then you pull away the waste fabric thread by thread. The embroidered design remains, but all of your guidelines are gone, as if by magic. I had more or less finished embroidering the letters. (There were little bits of letters I hadn't quite finished but knew that I could add after the purple fabric was pulled away.) I began by picking out all of my red basting ...
wish I could see this one in person but your photos are great, as is the link on FB - thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteMAM you would have loved this show. One of the things that makes this show different than so many shows about fashion is that this is the wearable stuff, not the outrageous that pushed the limits but the clothing that real people wore. I am sure that if you went through this show it would have reminded you of favorite garment from the era.
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