Vogues New World: American Fashionability and the Politics of Style

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Fashion Theory, Volume 12, Issue 1, pp. 121126

DOI: 10.2752/175174108X269595
Reprints available directly from the Publishers.
Photocopying permitted by licence only.
2008 Berg.

Alexandra Palmer,
Exhibition Reviews
Editor

Reviewing
Fashion
Exhibitions
Fashion Theory brings together international scholars and readers who
are interested in a wide range of histories and meanings of fashion and
the body. The exhibition review section offers an important place to
consider current interpretations of historic and contemporary fashions
in both large and small exhibitions, and to discuss diverse themes and
installations. It is critical to record these ephemeral projects, but to do
so in a meaningful way that goes beyond mere description of what is on
view (Figure 1).
The fashion exhibition, grounded in the history of nineteenth-century
exhibitions and commercial fashion merchandising, continues to offer
intriguing ways of thinking and looking at fashion. However, while the

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Alexandra Palmer

Figure 1
Installation of Indian export
chintz and embroidered
dresses and palampore shown
in 18th Century Costume
curated by Katharine B. Brett,
Textile Gallery, Royal Ontario
Museum (JulyOctober 1972).
With permission of the Royal
Ontario Museum ROM.

history of fashion display is old, the formal critical review process for
exhibitions has only just begun. At times curators have described their
exhibition installations, methods, and intentions (de la Haye 2004;
Palmer 1990; Thornton 1962). Though this is a valid contribution to the
eld, these do not serve as reviews because they do not record the visitor
experience. Reviews of museum fashion exhibitions have tended towards
a type that is a motley combination of fashion journalism, coupled with
emotional outpourings about the designs that have spoken to the
reviewer through some raried aesthetic and intangible communion.
These reviews are often found in the fashion pages, not the art section
of the press where the reviewers tend to focus on the exhibition in terms
of its relevance to current fashion trends and style. This is again a valid
stance but does not really constitute a review. Another type barely
mentions the exhibition in favor of a discussion of the party associated
with the exhibition opening. In this case the article is more of a whos
who at the event, and a critique of the designer ensembles worn. Most
reviews describe the exhibition contentsthe fashionsyet often omit
an analysis that measures the successes or shortfalls of the exhibition
itself, the curatorial thesis, and the installation techniques.
There are notable exceptions. The fashion reviews in the New Yorker
by Judith Thurman are often extended and thoughtful pieces, as were
those by Kennedy Fraser. As well, the entry of fashion exhibitions
into high art settings where fashion is normally not displayed, such as
Giorgio Armani designs at the Guggenheim, has caused much heated
debate from art critics. Comments tend to focus on the suitability and

Reviewing Fashion Exhibitions

123

hierarchical place of fashion in museum settings, rather than the success

and merits of the exhibition itself. But all debate is helpful in raising
awareness of the exhibitions.
Fashion Theory offers a central place to think about the review process
itself, and for critical discussions. This is important because the academy
of fashion history and theory is in its infancy and is rapidly crossing
and expanding across established academic territories. As Christopher
Breward eloquently discusses in this volume, some traditional museum
and material culture scholars continue to be threatened by the socalled New Wave of fashion studies. This work has been described
as tediously patronizing and self-congratulatory outpourings from
university departments presumably desperate for material of the next
Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), written by people who are not
dress historians and for whom dress is a new toy (Scott 2005: 140).
Valerie Cumming (2004: 78) calls these same scholars, intellectual
tourists who rarely bother to examine surviving dress or textiles, or
even consider their importance as evidence of changes in knowledge
and skills and who are actively burdening us with a mass of books
dealing with the body, clothes, costume, dress, fashion and textiles.
Fashion exhibitions and their reviews offer a bridge for crossing these
perceived boundaries as they combine new scholarship with artifact
study.
Yet who is eligible to write these reviews and how should it be
done? First and foremost an exhibition is a public forum, so any visitor
who has experienced an exhibition is a potential reviewer. But reviewers
need to analyze the actual displays and their reaction to them. Reviews
need to address the exhibition in its own terms: what did it set out to do,
how did it do this, was it successful, how, and if not why? The reviewer
needs to describe and analyze for the reader what was encountered in
the exhibitionwhat the visitor sees. This includes the placement and
order of the display, and an assessment of the choice. Does this aid or
detract from the thesis of the exhibition? The review needs to consider
the selection of the objects on display, how they are displayed and
what this contributes to the visual and intellectual understanding of the
exhibition thesis and the individual objects. This includes any text, its
placement and perhaps a consideration of font size and legibility.
For instance, when I attended Fashion in Colors at the CooperHewitt, National Design Museum (December 9 2005March 26 2006)
I had difculty reading the object labels due to the small point size, their
low placement, and lack of lighting. I found this extremely annoying as
I wanted to read about the beautifully presented objects. It seemed as if
the curator or the designer did not consider that labels were particularly
important. The result was that the effort required to read the text
diminished the signicance of the objects on display.
Reviews should, preferably, also be informed by the authors
expertise. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) mounted

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Alexandra Palmer

Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century (April

29 2004September 6 2004) in the European Sculpture and Decorative
Arts Galleries, it was important to have this exhibition reviewed by a
person who was an eighteenth-century scholar and who was engaged
in the current scholarly debates. Peter McNeil, a design and fashion
historian with expertise in the eighteenth century kindly agreed to write
this review. His review (McNeil 2005) appraised the exhibition in terms
of what it tried to do, and how it did or did not accomplish this. His
review showed a keen understanding of the constraints of museum
artifacts and environment, the importance of this installation in the
MMAs period rooms, and was set within a broad understanding of the
eighteenth-century cultural history and contemporary academic issues.
Only by formalizing the critique of exhibitions can curators and
visitors learn how to see and interpret the results. Ane Lynges (2007)
review of In Fashion: New Swedish Clothing Design notes that most
visitors engaged in this show in a personal way, looking at designs that
they liked or did not like, more than in an educational and learning
experience. She suggests that By providing historical and contextual
information In Fashion could have challenged visitors to think about
Swedish national design identity (p. 121). This brought to mind an
exhibition I curated. Au Courant. Contemporary Canadian Fashion,
held at the Institute of Contemporary Culture, Royal Ontario Museum
(April 1997January 1998) clearly delineated for me the difculty of
exhibiting modern dress (Figure 2).
Au Courant recognized that Canadian fashion has no national design
identity and was, The rst exhibition to show modern Canadian fashion
as a sophisticated, mature design form and successful commercial
endeavor . . . more than 40 Canadians whose work demonstrates
the range of style, versatility and multifaceted approaches taken to
womens, mens and childrens fashion and accessory design were on
display. My intention was to have visitors look at fashion as a form of
industrial design, and to learn about Canadas current contribution to
contemporary fashion. However, the fashion press, in particular, was
more interested in the names of who was in and who was left out,
even though the exhibit was not aimed at this knowledgeable Canadian
fashion world that was well versed in Canadian designer names. I was
interested in identifying for the Canadian public the understanding
that there were many, if unrecognized, Canadian fashion designers and
companies, such as Patrick Cox, John Fluevog, Marie St Pierre, MAC,
Westbeach, and Roots operating successful businesses, and that there
was an active and diverse fashion manufacturing sector in Canada. In
hindsight, I do not think this was very successfully conveyed.
Perhaps if I had had the opportunity to read about other exhibits
that had tackled similar issues of national design identity I would have
been able to state a clearer case. So, it was with great interest that I read
about other exhibitions that dealt with the same issue of displaying a

Reviewing Fashion Exhibitions

125

Figure 2
Installation of Suit by Mercy
in Au Courant: Contemporary
Canadian Fashion, curated
by Alexandra Palmer, Institute
of Contemporary Culture,
Royal Ontario Museum (April
1997January 1998). With
permission of the Royal Ontario
Museum ROM.

countrys contemporary fashion to their own nationals. The published

reviews of Danish fashion (Lynge 2005), or New Zealand fashion
(Goodrum 2004, 2005), and Swedish fashion (Lynge 2007) now offer
a matrix for thinking about the difculties and methods for presenting
national fashion histories. These exhibition reviews also articulate the
difculty of displaying current fashions to museum visitors who bring
considerable understanding of the material, and the problems relating

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Alexandra Palmer

to the innate shop window effect of dressing up mannequins. The

formal exhibition review allows these complex issues to be recorded,
considered, and discussed.
As this issue of Fashion Theory articulates, the debates around the
issues of exhibiting fashion are growing, even though mounting an
exhibition remains an expensive, complex, and labor-intensive process.
The fashion for studying, thinking about, looking at, and making
fashion history through exhibitions is not a passing phase. There are
complex, far-reaching, and multiple viewpoints and interpretations.
None is correct and none is nal. It is for scholars to critique their
peers and to consider how to review the growing number of fashion
exhibitions. A peer review system review is necessary to raise the bar
and provide a discourse that is intellectually different and, hopefully
more informed, than those generated by fashion journalists, and the
general public. The result can only deepen our understanding of the
complexity and vibrancy of fashion, and open up more ideas and ways
of exhibiting and thinking about fashion.

References
Cumming, Valerie. 2004. Understanding Fashion History. London: B.
T. Batsford.
Goodrum, Alison L. 2004. Exhibition Review: The First New Zealand
Fashion Week Exhibition. Fashion Theory 8(1): 99104.
Goodrum, Alison L. 2005. Exhibition Review: Flaunt: Art/Fashion/
Culture. Fashion Theory 9(1): 8994.
De la Haye, Amy. 2004. New Gallery Review: What Happened to all
Those Lovely Costumes? Fashion Theory 8(3): 33950.
Lynge, Ane. 2005. Exhibition Review: UNIK: Danish Fashion.
Fashion Theory 9(4): 4716.
Lynge, Ane. 2007. Exhibition Review: In Fashion: New Swedish
Clothing Design. Fashion Theory 11(1): 11522.
McNeil, Peter. 2005. Exhibition Review: Dangerous Liaisons.
Fashion Theory 9(4): 47786.
Palmer, Alexandra. 1990. The Royal Ontario Museum Costume &
Textile Gallery. Costume 24: 1136.
Scott, Margaret. 2005. Book Review. Clothing Culture, 13501650.
Costume 39: 1403.
Thornton, Peter. 1962. The New Arrangement of the Costume Court
in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Museum Journal 62(1): 32632.