CLOUT-Y WITH A CHANCE OF MET BALLS: FASHION AND FUNDRAISING’S BIGGEST NIGHT

Sew What | Chloé Houde

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I might be late in realizing this, but I only recently found out that the Met Ball is an annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and not just a fancy red carpet night for designers and celebrities to show off beautiful, over-the-top, statement-making outfits. The Met Ball, also known as the Met Gala or the Costume Institute Benefit, is an annual themed event held on the first Monday of May to raise funds for the Met's Costume Institute and to kick off its annual exhibition. The event raises enormous amounts of money annually, which goes towards funding exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements for the Institute. The Gala raised $US12 million in 2014 and over US$13 million in 2019. The Costume Institute is also the Met's only curatorial department that is responsible for its own fundraising, presumably due to the Gala's success. I was struck by the contrast between what I thought a fundraising event looked like and what the Costume Institute hosts every year. How did a museum fundraiser become one of the most mainstream, exclusive, and anticipated global fashion events of the year while also becoming ubiquitous in popular culture?

Gown by Chinese designer Guo Pei in the "China: Through the Looking Glass" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2015 | Source

The Costume Institute, originally the Museum of Costume Art, joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1946. At the time, charity events were hugely popular with New York socialites, who used philanthropic events to elevate their social status and retain relevance in high society. From its first iteration in 1948 as a benefit party, the Costume Institute's annual fundraiser remained an attractive socialite-centered event for decades. From 1972 to 1989, Diana Vreeland, special consultant to the Institute, greatly elevated the event. She transformed the benefit supper into a theme party linked to the theme of the Institute's yearly exhibition. The event garnered more notoriety and excitement throughout Vreeland's time at the Met, as both an art and social affair that became more international and open to celebrity. When Anna Wintour became the co-chair of the Met Gala in 1995, and took over leadership in 1999, the event veered its trajectory towards what we know it to be today. Anna Wintour has been the editor in chief of Vogue Magazine since 1988 and the artistic director of Condé Nast since 2013. Wintour wields an undeniable grip on the world of fashion through these positions, and the Met Gala is no exception. 

The Costume Institute's website | Source

Under Wintour's direction, the event has become much more exclusive. Over the years, Wintour has implemented a strict dress code, banned personal photography during the event (although some celebs sneak selfies in the bathroom), has made ticket and table prices more expensive (individual tickets jumped from US$15,000 to US$25,000 in 2014, up to US$30,000 in 2018, and tables went for US$275,000 in 2019), and she personally approves every single guest that attends (there are between 600-700 guests annually). Wintour is also responsible for making the event celebrity-focused, in a stark departure from the socialite event it had previously been (which some have lamented). It is now virtually impossible to buy individual tickets to the Gala, since companies and designers will buy tables and invite Wintour-approved celebrities to the event to model their creations. Wintour exerts immense control over the Gala, which has received criticism over the years.

The Met Gala is now inextricably tied to the contemporary world of fashion and design, more than it had ever previously been. Being seen at this event has long carried a heavy social importance for individuals, but nowadays, having a presence at the fashion event of the year is an unmissable marketing opportunity for designers, brands, and companies. It also carries much significance in determining a celebrity's relevance at a particular moment. The Met Gala is closely followed by millions of spectators, and has resulted in unforgettable and iconic moments for many celebrities that persist in popular memory.

Recent tweets highlighting Met Gala outfits worn by Kacey Musgraves, Zendaya, and Emily Ratajkowski from the past few years | Source, Source, Source

It is easy to miss the fact that the Met Gala is a museum fundraiser when there is so much notoriety, popularity, celebrity, and exclusivity tied to the event. Nicknamed "the Oscars of the East Coast," the Costume Institute Benefit is now considered part of the roster of yearly red carpet events, where famous people parade designer clothing. Anna Wintour's control looms large over the event, which has had the effect of closely associating the Met Gala with Vogue Magazine. Wintour has employed similar strategies for popularizing the Met Gala and Vogue; she was one of the first fashion magazine editors to have celebrities on cover pages, rather than models, and was the one who made the Gala the celebrity-saturated affair it is today. This association to celebrity has had the effect of bringing these cultural products out of their respective niches and into popular culture. It seems to be a symbiotic relationship masterminded by Anna Wintour; Vogue benefits from being associated with the enormously high profile Met Gala, celebrities add notoriety while adding to their own relevance, and the Costume Institute reaps the funding and exposure generated by this ever-prominent event. The Gala and the corresponding exhibition are so reliant on big corporate sponsorships that Wintour is consulted and signs off on the theme of the Costume Institute's yearly exhibition so that she can find appropriate sponsors. Her impact is present at every level. This degree of commercialism and control isn't without criticism, however.

Another important factor in the Met Gala's popularity is its relationship to fashion, which, as a topic of interest, is popular, visually engaging, and accessible to wide audiences. Fashion affects us whether we realize it or not, which the fictional Miranda Priestly (based on the real life Anna Wintour) reminds us of in the famous "Blue Sweater" scene from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. Fashion is ubiquitous in celebrity culture as well, and seeing both come together so obviously and opulently at the Met Gala makes for a blockbuster affair. Every year (except this year, for obvious reasons), on the first Monday of May, the world watches as the Costume Institute Benefit congregates a themed flurry of celebrities, artists, high-powered individuals, designers, brands, outfits, works of art, innovations, and lots and lots of money to create a monumental spectacle. Hard to believe it all started as a benefit supper, right? 

I may be wrong, but I (sadly) can't imagine a fundraiser for any other museum generating a cultural impact (or as much money) as the Met Gala.

Viral tweets about the Met Gala from 2018-2019 | Source, Source, Source

THE MEMORABLE FASHION OF THE ROARING 1920’s

Sew What | Natalie Heaton

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Photo courtesy of Natalie Heaton

Last month marked a century since the beginning of the roaring 1920s. This decade was marked by the end of the First World War, flappers, women’s liberation, and a booming economy. The fashion of this era is often portrayed through novels and movies, like The Great Gatsby, focusing on the edgy style of the flapper fashion. The museum sector is one of the best places the fashion of the 1920s is remembered, represented, and recognised.


Since the 1920s was a very prosperous time for the economy and many individuals, it is not uncommon for museums to represent this lavish era. The Spadina House Museum is an example of such a museum. In the house, there is an Art Deco feel, and women's dresses from the different time periods are placed strategically. The dresses that are displayed represent different trends of the decade, with dropped waists, raised hemlines, and overall, showing more skin. These dominated 1920s fashion, as they represented the new women.

Photo courtesy of Natalie Heaton

Photo courtesy of Natalie Heaton

Today, the fashion of the 1920s makes for a great Halloween costume or party theme, these trends were deeply tied to what was happening in Western society. During the First World War, women entered the public sphere. After the First World War, the number of women in post-secondary institutions was on the rise,  and they had opportunities that had not been available to them prior to the war. Women needed clothing that would be practical for work and allowed freedom of movement. This newfound liberation is reflected in the clothing, head to foot. This decade saw the exile of corsets, hair being cut into short bobs, and women drinking, smoking and dancing. If only their grandmothers saw them, oh the scandal!


With women’s style being so distinct during this decade, it is a favourite topic mentioned or on display in exhibitions on the 1920s. The City of Toronto Archives currently has an exhibition focusing on the 1920s. This exhibition looks at everything from advertising, old photos of Toronto, people living their day-to-day lives, and fashion trends. While looking at all the photos of old Toronto and the people that use to call this city home, it is hard to not notice the distinct fashion trends.

Photo courtesy of Natalie Heaton

MANNEQUINS IN THE MUSEUM

Sew What | Enya Barbeau 

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Mannequins are a mainstay of fashion and historic dress exhibitions. Not only can they act as an effective conservational mount for fragile garments, but they also provide visitors with a sense of how clothing items were intended to appear and function on the human body. However, behind the polished public gallery exists a thorny set of practical and intellectual challenges associated with using mannequins in a museum context.

Robe à la française, mannequin à la Met (source). 

A baseline issue is one of sizing and fit. The proportions of commercially available mannequins don’t correspond well with historic clothing, leaving it up to museum professionals to try to retrofit the mounts to better support the garments in their collections. A variety of techniques are used: padding and carving out retail mannequins, as well as fashioning portions of the figure from Fosshape and Ethafoam. These approaches are labour-intensive and require a discerning (and perhaps artistically trained) eye for the human form. Of course, the issue of fit could be eliminated through the use of custom mounts—but based on the financial reality in which most museums operate, it seems almost cruel to present pricey made-to-measure mannequins as a workable solution.

What is this "funding" of which you speak? (source).

Fitting mannequins to the garments is just the tip of the iceberg. In “Exhibiting Gender: Exploring the Dynamic Relationships between Fashion, Gender, and Mannequins in Museum Display,” Chloe Chapin, Denise Nicole Green, and Samuel Neuberg offer a thoughtful analysis of how the use of mannequins in exhibitions is entangled with broader questions of aesthetics and identity. In their survey of North American museum professionals, the authors found that the postures and poses of retail mannequins not only stand out as anachronistic and when displaying dress from eras past, but also reinforce exclusionary gender and beauty archetypes: “In addition to feeling that mannequins did not represent the breadth of gender expression, respondents also were critical for their not representing the diversity of fashioned bodies that exist globally and highlighted other intersecting subject positions like age, ethnicity, and ability as lacking.” The article highlights some of the creative work that people are doing to overcome the dearth of representative mannequins—such as the padding out of a dress form to represent a body that undergone top surgery for the Iowa State University exhibition Queer Fashion & Style: Stories from the Heartland.

Chant "Masahiro Mori" three times and he appears (source).

Another layer of thought revolves around questions of animation and materiality. Clothes are meant to be worn on a living body; although mannequins act as effective stand-in, garments still undergo a process of disembodiment and decontextualization when they sit static on these humanoid forms. Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson outline this phenomenon in the essay “The Body Clothed”: “Dress, the body and the self constitute a totality, and when dress and body are pulled apart, as in the costume museum, we grasp only a fragment, a partial snapshot of dress … Its displays cannot tell us how a garment moved when on the body, what it sounded like when it moved and how it felt to the wearer.” Museum workers try to close this gap in a number of ways. Some displays try to create a sense of embodiment through the use hyper-realistic mannequins—although this direction easily veers into Uncanny Valley. Others try to conjure the dynamism of a living body by augmenting mannequin displays with audio-visual content, live actors, and other special effects. In the 2011 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier,  clothed mannequins rotated around the gallery on a motorized belt. The same year, the Met exhibition Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen deployed fans to produce a gentle movement in the garments on display.

Like so many aspects of the museum field, mounting clothing for exhibitions involves extensive consideration and preparations behind the scenes before the finished product is brought into public view.  Next time you see a mannequin on display, try to evaluate the interpretive and aesthetic impact it has on your museum experience.  

FASHION: IT'S GOING TO THE DOGS

Sew What | Enya Barbeau 

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This week I’ve had the connection between animals, clothing, and museums on the brain—prompted by the latest episode of The Sunday Edition, where Michael Enright engaged Marc Bekoff, ecologist and evolutionary biologist, in a fascinating conversation about the inner lives and cultural practices of non-human animals. Museums’ fashion and textile collections are overwhelmingly stocked with items made by and for people. But our lives are intertwined with members of other species—and we humans are eager to put our opposable thumbs to use crafting garments for them.

Consider the dog. A walk through the streets of Toronto is enough to prove how eagerly we extend our passion for fashion to our canine companions. Coats and booties are popular choices in the winter, replaced with bandannas and rain jackets in the warmer months. Some fashion houses have even introduced speciality lines for dogs. Sadly, it’s a trend that can cross the line into animal mistreatment. The Ontario SPCA recommends the judicious use of seasonal garments for certain breeds—but the human desire to play dress-up should never supersede the comfort of the animal.

Guilty dog face, c. 1886 (source).

While dog fashion may have blossomed in the petri dish of consumer capitalism, it’s hardly a new phenomenon. Just ask your friendly neighbourhood museums and archives! (Or, take advantage of the many digitization projects that are enabling greater public access to collections and ask a museum on the other side of the world!) Dog owners have kitted out their pets with full-fledged wardrobes for centuries.

Velvet collar featuring insignia of Charles XI of Sweden, c. 1670-1690 (source).

The most common relic in museum collections is, unsurprisingly, the dog collar. Leeds Castle boasts a Dog Collar Museum that features neckwear from the 15th through 19th centuries, ranging from fearsome spiked iron specimens to gilded finery worthy of a jewellery box. Other institutions have older examples. The 2004-2011 travelling exhibition Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs included a leather dog collar that dates to 1426-1390 BCE.

Textile-based artifacts are a trickier beast, as there are fewer surviving examples. However, historic literature and artwork suggest that it was not unheard of for upper-class dog-owners to kit out their pets with fancy accessories and, in some cases, entire wardrobes. In an 1833 diary entry, then-Princess Victoria recorded the evening outfit of her beloved spaniel: “I dressed dear sweet little Dash for the second time after dinner in a scarlet jacket and blue trousers.”

Dash (left) and brethren, sans trousers (source).

The hotspot for dog fashion was, of course, Paris. A series of pet-care books reference the elaborate attire that a dog-about-town might acquire, including ensembles for afternoon calls, evening parties, travel, and days at the beach. In Chien de luxe—truly a manifesto for the ages—Mme. Charles Boeswillwald recommends lace underclothes to lend “a special cachet to the outfit.” (For more on the well-dressed Parisian canine, please check out Kathleen Kete’s The Beast in the Boudoir: Pet-keeping in nineteenth-century Paris.)

Fragonard depicts a mistress and pup with complementary ruffs, 1769 (source). 

By the twentieth century, the proletariat counterparts of these upper-crust dogs were receiving clothing of their own—in the shape of uniforms. One of the few surviving examples I could find of textile-based dog clothing is found in the collections of the Royal Air Force Museum. A Royal Flying Corps tailor custom-made the military-style jacket, complete with military badges, for an officer's terrier. The tradition of apparel and protective gear for working dog continues today; think bullet-proof vests for police dogs and vests and harnesses for service dogs.

As our relationships with dogs and other creatures continue to evolve, it makes sense to acknowledge the important social and cultural role that non-human animals play. I would welcome a dog’s “pretty embroidered coat” or “chic… bathing outfit” alongside human fashion in our museum collections any day.

WASSAILING WE GO: CAROLLING FASHION FROM AGES LONG PAST

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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So what’s your holiday style: trendy, traditional, or drunken viking?

Victorian winter wear for women and children, circa 1850. Source. 

If you’re planning on being ultra-traditional and going out carolling this holiday season, the most important thing to think about is your aesthetic. The popular thing these days is to wear a horrible Christmas sweater—some of which light up or play music. Or maybe, you might want to stick with good old red and green, which isn’t as old as you’d think. Our red and green Christmas colours

This plush blue velvet coat with white fur collar and cuffs
from the Aurora Museum & Archives looks more like 
what Santa would have originally worn. Photo courtesy
of Rachel Dice.

come from depictions of Santa Claus working amongst his merrily-clad elves, but originally, Santa would have worn white and blue during the holiday season. A 1920s era blue velvet coat with its white fur collar and cuffs in the textile collection at the Aurora Museum & Archives is more in line with what he would have worn back in his early days. So how did Santa’s outfits become such a big part of the holidays? And what about carolling?

Well, it’s a pretty well-known fact that the Santa we know and love today got his outfit from Coca-Cola ads introduced during the 1920s. Due to the popularity of the drink, it’s understandable that his cool red outfit would become a popular Christmas icon, leading festive revellers to don a red and white hat in honour of the festive figure. The classic look became part of an old holiday tradition—carolling.

In our modern day and age, carolling has pretty much become something confined to a stage at a

Michael Goodchild in his performing blacks at
the Exultante Winter Concert, the modern
carolling event. Photo courtesy of Annelise
Danielle. 

Christmas market or at special winter concerts. Depending on the venue and the choir, the styles we see either lean towards performing blacks or holiday gear. If you’re lucky, you might even see some Victorian-inspired carollers in top-hats, bonnets, and hoop skirts. Despite our modern influences in colour choices—most Victorian-inspired carollers perform decked out in red and green—actual Victorian carollers would have just worn their winter clothing accessorized with some holly or other seasonal flowers to mark the festive occasion.

If the Victorian era isn’t quite your style, then perhaps the real roots of carolling are for you. Carolling is an extremely old tradition that actually pre-dates Christmas itself. Originally called wassailing, this pagan Yuletide tradition was much more than just singing songs. Wassailers would perform ritual chants, sing, act out small skits, and make a merry havoc in winter months. These activities were usually accompanied by a traditional drink—called wassail. This drink would have been somewhere between a mead, beer, and apple cider. Wassailing would usually happen in an apple orchard on the twelfth night of Yule to awaken the trees, chase away demons, and convince the trees to thrive over the next year. After finishing up in the orchard, wassailers generally pointed themselves in the direction of the nearest village and continued on their drunken way.

Traditional clothing for wassailers was the ever-present tunic worn by most medieval men, or a bliaut and kirtle worn by women. Since it was also winter, wassailers wrapped furs around their leggings and arms to keep themselves warm, and also added in a mid-length cloak that usually went to their

Typical medieval garb for men, rich and poor. Wassailers
would have the addition of furs and capes to keep themselves
warm as they launched into the night to wreak festive havoc.
Source.

elbows. The type of fur was important as well. Most wassailers were peasants, which means that they used weasel or mink fur instead of the softer furs favoured by the rich. If a fur-clad wassailer made their way over to you demanding figgy pudding or the like (since that song didn’t exist yet), then you had better give it to them! People who refused to comply to a wassailer’s requests were pulled into rowdy or racy skits and chants while other wassailers caused havoc around them. Now THAT sounds like a holiday tradition that we all need.

So how about we forget about the traditional and tame group carolling, and go all out this holiday season? A bowl of cider, some furry leggings, and a bit of mischief are all you need to get into the wassailing mood.

The modern version of "traditional" carollers. Source.

Whatever your style, enjoy the holidays and have an excellent new year!

MORE THAN CLOTHES

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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Guislaine Lemay and Jordan Fee standing at the entrance to
Wearing Our Identity, photo courtesy of Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

A view of the exhibition, including a man's caribou coat
made, unusually, with winter fur. Photo courtesy of
Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

At the beginning of November, MUSSA organized a student trip to Montreal, which was written about by Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif this past Friday in her post ALLONS À MONTRÉAL: MUSEUM STUDIES FIELD TRIP. On this trip we were able to visit an alarming number of museums in pretty much three days (five museum visits for most of us, and six for a determined few). A specific exhibition stood out among the rest and has become a source of inspiration for my own work with textiles. 

The exhibit, titled Wearing Our Identity—The First Peoples Collection, is currently on display at the McCord Museum in Montreal. It is a permanent exhibition with a little twist—the objects on display switch out every two years in a pre-planned pattern. The main focus of the exhibition is to encourage the public to “explore the complex heritage of the First Peoples of Canada and learn more about how their dress has helped define their rich cultures and identities” (source). In a nutshell, Wearing Our Identity aims to show how Indigenous culture is  intrinsically linked with clothing and aesthetic representation.

Guislaine Lemay leads a group through her exhibit, including
Dr. Cara Krmpotich, Director of the Museum Studies program.
Photo courtesy of Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

The exhibition was co-curated by Guislaine Lemay, McCord’s resident curator for the Indigenous Cultures collection, and a dedicated team of Indigenous peoples who worked closely with Lemay to ensure accuracy in content as well as design. It was Guislaine Lemay herself who took our group on a guided tour of the exhibition.

Going into this exhibition, I was fascinated by the layout and the different styles of garments on display. One of my favourite pieces was a little girl’s parka, made of caribou fur and sinew from the early twentieth century. We were told that the parka showed it belonged to a little girl who had not yet reached the age of puberty. We were also told that the furs were sewn in a special way so that every layer did not have stitching holes inside, therefore making it warmer and more waterproof. The style of the parka and the stitching technique were specific to the Inuit Inuinnaq, and all of this contributed to the parka’s role in the identity of the wearer.

Clothing itself plays an extremely important role in our lives. The way we dress and choose to represent ourselves is a deliberate action we take, from buying the clothes, making them, or just grabbing them out of the closet. Some people even come to be known for their taste in clothes, whether they usually dress in blue polo shirts or vintage aesthetics with a modern twist. These clothing choices become part of their identity, influencing the way they see themselves and the way we see each other.

A display of moccasins made with different
styles depending on the cultural and regional
group. Photo courtesy of Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

Now, imagine that you couldn’t wear your favourite sweater. Imagine that those earrings your grandmother gave you were banned, even though you tried to wear them as often as possible. Imagine being forced to wear clothes that were selected for you by strangers, clothes that were strange, outlandish, and even just dreadfully boring. You would hardly feel like yourself, and perhaps if it went on long enough, you’d forget who you were to begin with. This is another important part of Wearing Our Identity. The exhibition addresses the cultural importance of clothing for Indigenous peoples, while also looking at points in Canadian history where their clothing was banned, appropriated, and even turned into marketing gimmicks.

So the next time you reach into your closet for that outfit that boosts your confidence or makes you feel invincible, remember that our country hasn’t always let others have that same choice. No identity deserves to be repressed through clothing. Remember, it’s more than just clothes.

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For the curious ones, here's some further reading:

The Press Release for the Exhibition Opening

The Press Release for the Exhibition Catalogue

The Texts Used in Wearing Our Identity