Today it was announced that the upcoming exhibit at The Met’s Costume Institute will be all about women. “Women Dressing Women” will open at the end of this year at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with a group of around 80 objects from its permanent collection by designers such as Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Vivienne Westwood along with contemporary designers including Miuccia Prada, Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour, Yeohlee Teng, Simone Rocha, and Comme des Garçons’s Rei Kawakubo, among others. It will trace a line through the history of 20th-century Western fashion.
“Our fall exhibition will provide an opportunity to engage with the critical histories of innovative women designers, all of whom played pivotal roles in the conception of fashion as we know it today,” said Mellissa Huber, the associate curator at The Met’s Costume Institute who is organizing the exhibition, in a press release. The show will feature famous designers along with others who may have been forgotten by history and will aim to show how fashion became a tool not only for creativity and self-expression but also for economic freedom and independence. “The connective thread between different generations of professional women reveals how subsequent generations have built and expanded upon the legacy of their predecessors,” said Karen Van Godtsenhoven, guest cocurator of the exhibition. “By reflecting on the intergenerational dialogues between these designers and the talented women who worked alongside them, we aim to offer a contemporary point of view, further propelling the conversation between audiences and scholars.”
The exhibition will take place across many of the Costume Institute’s galleries in chronological order, from the anonymous dressmakers of the early 20th century to the designers who worked in Paris for the women of society through the globalization and democratization of fashion that began in the 1960s and remains still to this day. Included are women like Adèle Henriette Nigrin Fortuny—wife of Mariano Fortuny and an experienced dressmaker who helped construct his designs and was instrumental in the creation of his famed Delphos pleated gown, first introduced in 1909—as well as Ann Lowe, an African American woman born in Alabama in 1898 the granddaughter of an enslaved woman and a plantation owner, who went on to become a celebrated fashion designer in the early 20th century and who created Jacqueline Kennedy’s gown for her wedding to John F. Kennedy. That is one of the most influential dresses on one of the most iconic women in American history, yet its maker has not become a household name despite the cult status surrounding the creation, even as now we live in a culture that thrives on unearthing and celebrating these unsung heroes.
Huber’s statement continued, “In recognizing that the contributions of women to fashion are unquantifiable, our intention with this show is to celebrate and acknowledge through a focus on the Costume Institute’s permanent collection, which represents a rich timeline of Western fashion history. We hope that this exhibition will foster impactful conversations between our visitors and across the designers’ larger bodies of work, highlighting the plurality and diversity of women’s important contributions to the field.”
Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge at the Costume Institute, doubled down on that sentiment. “Women have been instrumental to the success of the Costume Institute since its inception—its founding members include several inspiring women—and the department remains dedicated to recognizing the artistic, technical, and social achievements of women. We look forward to this opportunity to honor many of the designers, donors, and scholars who have contributed to shaping the Costume Institute and, more broadly, the history of fashion.”
