Inside In America: An Anthology of Fashion
Featuring the Oscar de la Renta dress on loan from the FIDM Museum Collection
Photo Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By curator Kevin Jones

Business trips are fun: oftentimes with delays and long hours, but always an adventure and way to meet new colleagues. This past week, I flew cross-country to New York City for installation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The FIDM Museum’s stellar collections were tapped again by The Costume Institute (CI) for inclusion in their latest exhibition, In America: An Anthology of Fashion, debuting May 2nd at the Met Gala, known as the "Party of the Year" since its founding in 1948 (and documented in the 2016 film The First Monday in May). The show opens to the public on the 7th and runs through September 5th.

L) Oscar de la Renta backstage with Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes at the Battle of Versailles fashion show in 1973. R) Evening Gown by Oscar de la Renta, Spring/Summer 1974 FIDM Museum Collection: Gift of The Museum at FIT 97.291.18 

In America: An Anthology of Fashion is the second half of a two-part look at the development of dress in the United States since its founding in the 18th century. The first part – In America: A Lexicon of Fashion – opened last September in the Anna Wintour Costume Center galleries (downstairs from the Egyptian Wing) and concentrates on mid-20th century design to the present, and is an ongoing companion to the Anthology. The Anthology installation is staged throughout the period rooms in the American Wing. According to The Met’s website, "these interiors will display a survey of more than two hundred years of American domestic life and tell a variety of stories – from the personal to the political, the stylistic to the cultural, and the aesthetic to the ideological... [and] explore the role of dress in shaping American identity and address the complex and layered histories of the rooms." 

The FIDM Museum has loaned garments in both areas.

Unisex Bodysuit by Rudi Gernreich, Fall 1970
FIDM Museum Collection: Bequest of the Rudi Gernreich Estate
G85.331.50
Photo Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For A Lexicon of Fashion, the CI dressed their Fall 1970, black wool-knit Rudi Gernreich bodysuit [1985.374.24a,b]. Due to the extended length of this installation, the curators ask to borrow our cream version of the bodysuit to swap with theirs for conservation reasons. We agreed. For An Anthology of Fashion, we loaned an Oscar de la Renta blue silk-charmeuse evening dress from Spring/Summer 1974 to be displayed surrounded by John Vanderlyn’s 1818-19 panoramic mural of the palace of Versailles and its gardens. This particular dress was modeled in the now-infamous "Battle of Versailles" fashion show held on November 28, 1973 that pitted American and French designers in a showdown of sartorial supremacy: America won! Fashion designer and movie director Tom Ford guest curated this gallery, and meshes the stylized look of the silver mannequins used by former CI creative-consultant Diana Vreeland for the 1974 Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design exhibition with the dynamic, freeze-framed Ju-Jitsu fighting scenes in the sci-fi thriller The Matrix (Warner Bros., 1999); a smattering of saber-wielding fencers about to skewer their enemy’s clothing is also thrown into the mix. Due to the height of the mid-air posed mannequin, it was the first time I completed an installation while atop a ladder!

The dressing took most of the day, but I did have time to visit the newly renovated British Galleries, and to view the gem of an exhibition, Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, which I highly recommend before it closes in March 2023. The next day I jetted back to California and all the projects we have in the works at the FIDM Museum.

Rhetorical question: How great is it that you can now visit us on both coasts?!

"...FIDM’s Art of Costume exhibit functions not just as a complement to the Academy Awards each year, but also as homage to creatives behind the scenes who contribute to the cinematic experience in nuanced ways we often take for granted. Nothing you see on screen is ever by accident, especially when it comes to what people are wearing, and costuming has just as much value and impact on the way a film makes us think and feel."

– Lena Lecaro, LA Weekly

The Art of Costume Design in Film exhibition continues through June 4, 2022. Make sure to see it – or see it again. Admission is free.

Exhibition Photos: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages