“Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” at the city’s de Young museum poses (and engagingly answers) the question: What happens when you put on an exhibition dedicated to clothes that were both personal style statements and public spectacle, worn against the backdrop of a city in a state of constant flux and reinvention? The designers in Fashioning San Francisco, curated by the museum’s Laura L. Camerlengo, and running from January 20 to August 11, are certainly impressive enough. There are iconic look—both for day and evening, as well as shoes—from Jeanne Lanvin to Karl Lagerfeld, Mario Fortuny to Alexander McQueen, and Coco Chanel to Rodarte, not to mention a cache of lesser known talents who will have you googling like crazy to learn more, such as local couturier Richard Tam.
Yet equally noteworthy is the roll call of Bay Area women, many leading philanthropists, whose donations and loans from across the decades made this show not only possible but also historically rich and complex: Constance B. Peabody, Norah Stone, Diane B. Wilsey, Christine Suppes, Dodie Rosekrans, and Denise Hale, among many others. No one could ever accuse any of these women of not pushing the fashion envelope—or closet door, if you prefer. For every piece of exquisite evening wear, such as the renowned strapless Junon gown by Dior in 1949 or a 1980s social X-ray cocktail frock from Christian Lacroix, is some radical experiment from Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons or the achingly romantic off-kilter historicism of early John Galliano. (Though for this writer one of the many treats this show contains is Madame Grès’s sublime dresses which demonstrate what can happen when fabric and body meet together.)
Tom Campbell, Director and CEO of the de Young, says that this is a show where “the ethos of fashion in San Francisco mirrors the women who have scaled the city’s civic, social, and cultural ranks with indefatigable style and panache. [The exhibition] paints a vivid and fascinating picture of how style in the Bay has evolved alongside the achievements and inspirations of its residents.” That approach certainly lies at the heart of Camerlengo’s thesis. While “Fashioning San Francisco” represents not only a triumph for the textiles department she oversees—this will be the de Young’s first showing of its fashion collections since 1989—it is the intimate connections created between wearer, place, and history that was curatorially irresistible for her.
“The exhibition really showcases the strengths of this collection, such as French haute couture and contemporary Japanese fashion design,” says Camerlengo, “but it does so in a way to reflect how these holdings intersect with the social political changes in the city itself from the early 1900s to today. So it’s very much locally rooted. And I think that [the show] gives a much more personal touch than most fashion exhibitions and a sense also of how people really dressed for every occasion here throughout the history of the city.”
Camerlengo cites, for instance, the opening of the San Francisco Opera in the early 1950s, a moment immortalized over 10 pages in Life magazine, where the city’s denizens could showcase their Dior, and gain some one upwomanship on the likes of New York. The fabulously irrepressible fashion plate Denise Hale, for one, has loaned a purple Sybil Connolly dress from 1983 with, she says, “the tiniest pleats you have ever seen” which she wore to meet Queen Elizabeth II for a state dinner. Her other contribution is a stunning Gianfranco Ferré bustier, ball skirt, and shawl; Ferré had made it as a gift for Hale’s 20th wedding anniversary and delivered it to San Francisco personally.
Christine Suppes has donated 500 ensembles to the de Young, which she accumulated over the last 30 years or so, both an act of staggering generosity and an absolute labor of love. (It was always intended by Suppes and her late husband that her collection would be passed to a museum.) Her trove of treasures features heavily in “Fashioning San Francisco.” Suppes’s favorites include a Geoffrey Beene suit from the early ’90s, a John Galliano bias-cut dress from 1994 (she found it on a mannequin at the soon-to-be shuttered department store I. Magnin: “I never thought I would find what was then one of the most important dresses in the world,” she says), and with a heartbreaking symmetry, something from McQueen’s first collection, and something from his very last. She also donated a McQueen pantsuit from 1996’s Dante collection. “A friend said to me, ‘Where on earth are you going to wear it?!’’ recalls Suppes, laughing. “In London, I told her. She said I would have people following me up and down the street. And I did.”
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Part of the excitement of putting together the exhibition for Camerlengo comes from the fact that, as she puts it, “San Francisco has always been called a culturally fluid city and it is true: We’re a port city on the Pacific rim, on the edge of the western frontier; a converging point for all sorts of different cultures, backgrounds, immigrants—the framework of San Francisco is very different from other US cities.” Out of this, she says, rose a population craving cosmopolitan fashion and curious about creators from beyond American shores—not only from Europe, but from Asia. Still, even with the geographical diversity of the exhibition’s designers, Camerlengo is keen to stress that the exhibition is but one expression of the city’s sartorial history, and doesn’t, say, delve into its mid-century countercultural era, or the LGBTQIA+ pride which emerged in the 1970s.
She is keen too to underscore that many of the looks in the exhibition bear global aesthetic influences. That meant, she says, “really looking at cultural appropriation, and appreciation, which manifests itself throughout our European and American collections, and indeed throughout fashion history itself. How does colonialism or imperialism or perceptions of other cultures…how does this impact what somebody ultimately creates as a fashion garment?” To help guide the exhibition she worked with Abram Jackson, the de Young’s Director of Interpretation, and Dr. Sara Cheang of the Royal College of Art in London.
The show also addresses another question: How do you represent the history of fashion in the age of AI? For that, de Young turned to Snap. An interactive augmented reality installation has been developed which allows visitors to experience ‘wearing’ some of the clothing on display from Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, and Kaisik Wong. That magical technological sleight of hand allows us all to become residents of San Francisco’s sartorial past, even if only for however long it takes us to look at our transformed selves reflected back at us from futuristic mirrors.
“Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” will run from January 20 to August 11, 2024.