The Arts in New York City

There are dozens of magazines devoted to fashion; Elle, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, just to name a few. Each magazine is filled back-to-back with advertisements displaying gorgeous people in gorgeous outfits. To me, the garments that covered these people were just clothes, not art. That was why I was a little bit surprised when my friend attending the Fashion Institute of Technology asked if I would like to go visit the museum at her school. The museum was entirely devoted to the art of fashion. I was a bit skeptical as to how an entire museum filled with pieces of cloth sewn together could be classified as art, so I decided to go along for the ride and see for myself.

            Once I stepped into the gallery, my breath was taken away. Everything was so dazzling. The exhibits ranged from clothing to shoes to accessories from designers such as Chanel, Hermès, Valentino, and others. There was one particular exhibit I was drawn to entitled “Luxury.” It displayed the extravagant couture from the 18^th century to the present, showing the change in the fashion trends over time. The dresses back in the 18^th century were much bigger and not as slim and fitting as the dresses are now. One thing I saw that was simply amazing was the design of a robe from the 18^th century. It was made using expensive silk and lace, but that was not the beautiful part. On the robe there was a vivid flower print on it. It decorated the robe with the various colors of flowers without completely overwhelming it. Looking at all of these gowns made me really feel like I had traveled back in time.

            Here I also discovered that there was more behind the beauty of couture. Towards the beginning of 18^th century, important scholars thought that luxury was morally corrupting, but the definition of luxury has changed over time. Luxury began to be seen as a positive influence to the involvement in the wealth of nations. These works provide employment for many craftspeople and designers in the community. Garment making began to become more known as an international business. When these pieces of fashion were created, the creator put their thoughts and feeling into it. Like all other types of art, they designed it based on their own ideas and usually created the item to portray some sort of attitude. For example, there were dresses that were very minimal to keep with the modern opinion of less being better and there were other dresses that had rhinestones encrusted on the lining to display a sort of pretentious manner.

            At the end of my visit to this museum, my mindset about the boundaries of art had expanded to include fashion. Like painters and sculptors, fashion designers are too artists. Instead of using paint or stone, designers use jewelry and fabric as their mediums to create their masterpieces. The way some of these dresses were designed with each piece of embroidered work done specifically that way to match the entire outfit. Each item represented the time period and the current styles of that period. The marvelous clothing displayed in the gallery and truly showed how fashion could be translated into art.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Joanna Yau, WRITING ASSIGNMENTS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.