There weren’t many men visiting Women Dressing Women, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit on female designers through modern history. It was as if all the ladies who attended had checked their boyfriends or husbands at the door, where they huddled together like dads outside a Forever 21 dressing room during back-to-school shopping season.
We were better off for it. It felt like a screening of the Barbie movie inside the Met’s Costume Institute on an early afternoon last week. I saw people of various races, ages and body types let out collective shrieks at an original Chanel little black dress. As I stood in front of a sexy, see-through, white Tory Burch gown, I nodded emphatically when a woman turned to me and said, “I need that for my wedding.” Nearby, one twentysomething complimented another on her Telfar loafers. When two elderly women admired a Norma Kamali parachute dress, a young mother offered to take their photo in front of it.
At times, the pop feminist vibe among guests felt a little too saccharine, and the posturing of the exhibit itself too self-congratulatory. As the New York Times reported, this is the first exhibit the Met has shown that’s dedicated solely to the work of women. It’s comically overdue. But I couldn’t help but smile as I watched a transient community form among the garments. People who cherish clothes have an instant connection with each other: we live for the spark of adrenaline that comes with complimenting a stranger on their outfit in a restaurant bathroom or crowded party. These moments are why I continue my mercurial love affair with an art form that can make me feel like absolute shit one day and on top of the world the next.
For this reason, if you’re willing to turn off the cynical part of your brain – or the part of your brain that’s suspicious of cults – Women Dressing Women is a triumph. There are pieces from more than 70 female designers dating back to the early 20th century, and each one is gorgeous. Winding through the exhibit, you’ll find 1920s flapper garb, 1940s workwear, jumpsuits from the 60s and 70s, 80s power shoulders, 90s slinky slip dresses, and pieces from runways as recent as this year. Their omission from fashion lore is one of the driving forces behind Women Dressing Women, which seeks to celebrate designers who were often denied credit for their contributions to culture.
Some of the examples are egregious. Ann Lowe, a Black American designer, crafted Jackie Kennedy’s era-defining wedding dress, though her name wasn’t attached to it until years later. According to the Washington Post, Lowe faced many indignities while doing her job: upon delivering the gown to the wedding party in Newport, Rhode Island, she was told to go through a service entrance. She refused; either the dress went through the front door, Lowe said, or it went back to New York. One of Lowe’s other creations, a darling white, empire-waisted gown with rose appliqués, gets a prominent spot in the Women Dressing Women collection.
Steps away from Lowe’s piece is the Delphos gown, a finely pleated silk garment released in the first years of the 20th century and designed to be worn without underwear – a scandalous suggestion for its era. The gown was an immediate hit, its success attributed to and benefiting Mariano Fortuny, although his wife, Henriette Negrin Fortuny, actually designed it.
Gen Z might appreciate the story of Elizabeth Hawes, one of the best-known designers of the 1930s, a critic of the industry’s excess and early campaigner for genderless clothing – she believed that men should wear skirts and women should wear trousers. (Disillusioned with her career, Hawes abandoned design and became a United Auto Workers organizer … where she also encountered rampant gender discrimination.)
You don’t need to be a historian to chart Hawes’ work to that of Hillary Taymour, behind today’s eco-conscious clothing line Collina Strada, known for its inclusive spirit and determinedly fun clothing. A lace, polychrome-printed bodysuit that Taymour made for Aaron Philip, a Black transgender and disabled model, on display in the exhibit, surely would have made Hawes smile. So would the pleated minidress inspired by the Congolese flag that was crafted by Anifa Mvuemba of Hanifa, the Beyoncé-approved designer of body-hugging knitwear.
Women Dressing Women is an exhaustive, and at times quite inspiring, look at the past. It does important work in correcting the historical record (and reminding TikTok-era activists that thwarting gender binaries didn’t start with their generation). I just wish it dreamed more ambitiously for the future.
When I say I love fashion, I’m referring to the clothes, not the industry. We know the business behind the art is run by rich, white, conglomerate-owning men who are completely out of touch with the majority of people who buy clothes. Women Dressing Women won’t change the industry. Given that it is produced by the Met (and sponsored by Morgan Stanley, no doubt a fan of the corporate status quo), it has a tendency to define feminism as the acquisition of power and influence for women.
But the most creative designers in the exhibit wanted to dismantle the system, not become a part of it. Vivienne Westwood never gave up her punk ethos even as she rose up the industry’s ranks. The British designer was outspokenly anti-capitalist, demonstrating with Extinction Rebellion up to her death last year at age 81. One could argue that Westwood’s contemporary Katharine Hamnett created the modern slogan T-shirt, selling tops with anti-war and anti-Margaret Thatcher statements in the 1980s. Hamnett’s pro-disarmament “Stay Alive in 85” tee is included in the collection.
While these women may not have garnered the same attention as top male designers of the era (Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein are all household names), they used their fame to advocate for change. That’s more revolutionary than accepting a top job at one of the big conglomerates like LVMH or Kering, both still run by fashion’s favorite demographic, white guys from France.
Likewise, any institution that celebrates Karl Lagerfeld the same year it launches its first all-woman exhibit deserves skepticism. Women Dressing Women’s co-curator Mellissa Huber worked on this year’s Met Gala, which was dedicated to the late creative director of Chanel. Despite the fact that he was a misogynist who upheld fashion’s shameful tradition of thin-worship and exploitation of models, the Met produced a mostly uncritical exhibit that doubled as a shrine to the man. Are our institutions finally celebrating women because it’s the right thing to do, or because it’s trendy? (Women Dressing Women’s original launch was set for 2020 to coincide with 100 years of women’s suffrage in America; Covid delayed it. That still would have been too late.)
I do hope, though, that Women Dressing Women changes its visitors, whose plucky exuberance you can’t help but absorb as you meander through the garments. You don’t need to work in fashion to appreciate this. If you wear clothes, it’s worth learning the lineage of style. If every piece in the collection has a story (and most do; please read the wall text!), then that story only grows richer when the piece is worn by a woman with her own reasons for getting dressed in the morning.
As I left the Costume Institute, I finally saw one man entering the exhibit. He was young, and I guessed he was a design student at one of the New York fashion schools, Parsons or FIT. (His all-black ensemble and bleached eyebrows gave it away.) He looked serious and carried a scratch pad. You could tell he planned to take notes.