Style and Fashion
I Haven't a Thing To Wear
Rose Madeline Mula writes: Three mysteries will always taunt me: Einstein's Theory of Relativity, how to buy low and sell high, and how it's possible to have three huge closets crammed with clothes and still never have a thing to wear-at least nothing appropriate for the occasion at hand. Everything I own is either too formal or too casual for anything to which I'm ever invited. I seem to have an uncanny knack for either buying all the wrong clothes or not getting asked to any of the right affairs. more »
The Metropolitan Vanities Hold A Variety of Beautifying Paraphernalia
In the late 17th C., European high society began commissioning luxurious specialized furniture from craftsmen and furniture makers. The poudreuse in France, and the low boy, Beau Brummel, and shaving table in England served as models for the dressing table. During the 19th C., dressing tables were made in many revivalist styles including the Gothic, Elizabethan, Rococo, Renaissance, and Colonial revivals. more »
Future Beauty at the PEM: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion
The fundamentals of haute couture in Europe and America — highly sexualized fitted forms, balance, finish, invisible tailoring and complementary color and pattern — are noticeably absent from contemporary Japanese fashion. Instead, imperfection, transience, austerity, asymmetry, roughness, simplicity and subtlety are valued. As designer Yohji Yamamoto affirmed, "I think perfection is ugly. Perfection is a kind of order ... things someone forces onto a thing. A free human being does not desire such things." more »
Beauty's Legacy, Material Opulence and Personal Excess: Gilded Age Portraits
With the amassing of great fortunes came the drive to document the wealthy in portraiture, echoing a cultural pattern reaching back to colonial times. A brilliant generation of American and European artists rose to meet that demand. The exhibit examines those portraits of famous society beauties and powerful titans of business and industry. more »