Feminism and Fashion
The museum I visited today, the Gemeente (or municipal) Museum in the Hague, had an exhibition titled Femmes Fatales, which claimed to be about feminism . . . .
. . . and fashion. I loved seeing the original Mary Quant ribbed turtleneck and the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress.
I also appreciated the reform dress - I'd heard about them and never seen one before. In descriptions, they are always completely utilitarian, but this one was quite beautiful and inspiring.
However, the exhibit as a whole left me wondering about feminism and fashion. The curators made an effective argument for the feminism of designers in a male system. Yet I cannot agree that the clothes themselves were all feminist. What is a feminist outfit anyway? Can clothing be implicitly feminist? Would these completely plastic outfits be considered feminist, for instance? Strange things happen when a woman's skin can't breathe . . .
This one is molded to look like a relief map.
This one looks like strips of laminate. I was interested in the extent to which design now relies on 3-D printing in its early stages.
I do not accept that a dress or outfit that can't be worn by a real woman (and yes, that term is contested) is feminist. Therefore, I would not consider the above outfits to be feminist. Or this ghoulish one, composed of plastic with fake birds, supposedly a comment on wildness:
The surrounds and design of the exhibit added to the message and were often quite clever, however.
Yes, those ARE irons.
Last, but not least, I had a wonderful chuckle. Many of my fellow visitors dressed for the exhibition. I have no doubt that some of the fashions cost thousands of euros or dollars - it doesn't matter. I wore my new Gudrun Sjoden sale cardigan; I bought it in Cologne and I thought it would look slightly dressy for meetings in The Hague, even though I had black jeans on. Needless to say, I didn't look quite like the model below.
I was halfway through the exhibit when a woman stopped me and told me in three languages - Dutch, French, and finally, English - how elegant I looked and what a perfect outfit I had selected for the exhibit, innovative and unusual! All those years of sitting on the sidelines at school dances and being told I looked frumpy dissipated. Take that world! I can be a feminist fatale!
. . . and fashion. I loved seeing the original Mary Quant ribbed turtleneck and the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress.
I also appreciated the reform dress - I'd heard about them and never seen one before. In descriptions, they are always completely utilitarian, but this one was quite beautiful and inspiring.
However, the exhibit as a whole left me wondering about feminism and fashion. The curators made an effective argument for the feminism of designers in a male system. Yet I cannot agree that the clothes themselves were all feminist. What is a feminist outfit anyway? Can clothing be implicitly feminist? Would these completely plastic outfits be considered feminist, for instance? Strange things happen when a woman's skin can't breathe . . .
This one is molded to look like a relief map.
This one looks like strips of laminate. I was interested in the extent to which design now relies on 3-D printing in its early stages.
I do not accept that a dress or outfit that can't be worn by a real woman (and yes, that term is contested) is feminist. Therefore, I would not consider the above outfits to be feminist. Or this ghoulish one, composed of plastic with fake birds, supposedly a comment on wildness:
Yes, those ARE irons.
Last, but not least, I had a wonderful chuckle. Many of my fellow visitors dressed for the exhibition. I have no doubt that some of the fashions cost thousands of euros or dollars - it doesn't matter. I wore my new Gudrun Sjoden sale cardigan; I bought it in Cologne and I thought it would look slightly dressy for meetings in The Hague, even though I had black jeans on. Needless to say, I didn't look quite like the model below.
I was halfway through the exhibit when a woman stopped me and told me in three languages - Dutch, French, and finally, English - how elegant I looked and what a perfect outfit I had selected for the exhibit, innovative and unusual! All those years of sitting on the sidelines at school dances and being told I looked frumpy dissipated. Take that world! I can be a feminist fatale!
What a lovely conclusion to your visit to the exhibition.
ReplyDeleteI suppose "feminist fashion" should be fashion that celebrates women -- and that is a pretty general objective, which fashion designers as artists would no doubt be inclined to interpret in a wide-ranging and at times puzzling ways. One option, for example, would be to make fashion that makes women "look good" -- but by whose standards? What does "looking good" mean anyway?
Perhaps one subtext of the exhibition might have been that what celebrates women varies throughout history; or another objective might have been to show the variety of "looks" women designers have proposed, throughout history.
Lots of big questions here; and maybe the exhibition didn't really address the problem of expressing the questions clearly?
Yes. It is traveling to Belgium next, but will be closer to Maastricht than to Brussels.
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