Review: MoMA Examines Iconic Fashion Items
Curated by the big-minded, senior curator for architecture and design Paola Antonelli, "Items: Is Fashion Modern?" at the Museum of Modern Art is as ambitious as it is far-reaching. Inspired by a personal list created by Antonelli called "Garments that Changed the World," the exhibit is an expansive arrangement of over one hundred items and articles that have left a towering impact on fashion in the 20th and 21st centuries. There are items like “The Little Black Dress,” Levi’s 501 jeans, and the classic white t-shirt, but the entire show fills up approximately four large rooms, and each item is meticulously documented with accompanying placard cards and video displays. So plan to spend some time.
From mini-skirts and mile-high platform shoes, to bucket hats and track suits, to dashikis and zoot suits, the exhibition is the MoMA’s first to include fashion since the 1944 show, “Are Clothes Modern?” Antonelli, along with her in-house team of curators – Michelle Millar Fisher, Stephanie Kramer, Anna Burckhardt and Kristina Parsons – assembled an advisory board of fashion experts and scholars to help gauge and select the elements of style that have mattered the most in our culture, some of which have posed political ramifications. Items like the hoodie, which went from a sweatshirt with a hood to a symbol of protest following the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012, and the jersey of former NFL player turned activist Colin Kaepernick.
While the exhibit feels perhaps overly curated at times, as Antonelli told me, “Curating is communicating.”
Consider fashion and its enduring significance communicated.
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