CULTURE Say Yes to the Dress
COFFIN/VOGUE: © CONDÉ NAST
Pieces from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection arrive in San Francisco for a glamorous overview of 20th-century fashion design
Culture Opener Gilbert Adrian’s 1949 “The Tigress” ensemble reinterprets an 18thcentury pannier dress. The designer joked that he was inspired to create the dress after a trip to Africa, even though “there are no tigers in Africa.”
D
espite the rise of wearable tech in the mainstream psyche, the Bay Area’s first priority hasn’t always been fashion. A study of the craft, on the other hand, borders on tradition at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), where the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier have been the subjects of high-profile exhibitions drawing massive audiences (and inaugurated by irreverent, talk-of-the-town opening-night galas). This month FAMSF’s California Palace of the Legion of Honor hosts a fresh take on influential garments, with an encyclopedic look at clothing from 1910 to 1980 at the San Francisco museum. “High Style: The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection” includes pieces selected from the borough’s world-famous holdings, now housed and maintained in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. Originally created at the Met by curator Jan Glier Reeder, and set up by the Legion’s Jill D’Alessandro, FAMSF’s curator of costume and textile arts, the 65 mannequins on display>>
WRITTEN AND EDITED BY ELIZABETH KHURI CHANDLER
MARCH 2015
C 149