Tanya Marcuse's Undergarments and Armor
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Tanya Marcuse, Corset with Silk Ribbon 1880s (from the collection of the Museum at FIT)
Don’t miss the exhibit Love & War: The Weaponized Woman, which will close this Saturday. Of particular notice are the photographs of Tanya Marcuse, which have been recently published in a beautiful clothbound book by Nazraeli Press with an introduction by Valerie Steele. Marcuse received a Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph undergarments and armor in a number of museums and archives in the U.S. and England. The beautifully evocative pictures trace parallels between these seemingly polarized categories of dressing by focusing on highly structured undergarments such as bustles, corsets and cage crinolines, and on amor which mirror the bodily contour of the wearer, thus “unveiling” the inside of the body rather than shielding it. As Valerie Steele points out in the book’s introduction, Marcuse’s plates (which often capture these garments still on their museums’ forms) perfectly illustrate that “certain poetic beauty in the historical remains of the past.”
Francesca
Fashion Projects #5 is devoted to fashion curation, examining the meteoritic rise in relevance of fashion exhibitions.
It features interviews with an eclectic assortment of leading practitioners from different corners of the world. The issue includes long Q&As with Harold Koda, the longtime, recently retired curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, as well as the Museum at FIT’s veteran leader Valerie Steele. It also features interviews with curators in Antwerp (the ModeMuseum’s Kaat Debo), Toronto (Royal Ontario Museum’s Alexandra Palmer) and Venice (Maria Luisa Frisa); academics studying the field (Hazel Clark, Annamari Vänskä, and Alistair O’Neill); and, giving an on-the-ground perspective, the Met’s head conservator, Sarah Scaturro. The issue’s cover stars Greer Lankton’s sculptural representation of legendary Vogue editor and Costume Institute doyenne Diana Vreeland, who continues to loom over the field years after her death.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Showmanship and History: An Interview with Harold Koda by Francesca Granata
Woman of Steele: An Interview with Valerie Steele by Lisa Santandrea
Exploring Fashion’s Openness: An Interview with Kaat Debo by Alex Esculapio
London, After a Fashion Curator: An Interview with Alistair O’Neill by Alexis Romano
Curation and Conservation: An Interview with Sarah Scaturro by Mae Colburn
Reflections on Fashion Curating
An Interview with Hazel Clark and Annamari Vänskä
Fashion in the Vast Museum: An Interview with Alexandra Palmer by Ingrid Mida
Restless Curating: An Interview with Maria Luisa Frisa by Marco Pecorari