by Zoë Pollock
The Met has been at the forefront of ushering the world of apparel under the wing of art:
Fashion exhibits like that on Alexander McQueen and Schiaparelli and Prada are now major attractions, not peripheral or trivial like the old costume exhibits, because of, rather than despite, the fact that they blur the boundary between high-brow and low, enduring and ephemeral, mind and body, vanity and philosophy, and art and commerce. They glory in the confusion, rather than try to hide or rationalize it.
The clothes that scream art are almost always unwearable, bordering on ugly. John Waters recently gave an amazing speech in honor of Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo at the Council of Fashion Designers of America:
I wear Comme des Garçons the same way Andy Warhol once wore $100,000 women’s necklaces underneath his Brooks Brothers turtlenecks — to be fashionable in secret. Only you know you spent money when you wear Rei’s creations. In fact, some of the more fashion-impaired public actually feels sorry for us! “That’s a shame about that coat,” an uninformed friend said to me once in a bar in Baltimore when I was wearing, well high fashion. “John Waters in his thrift-shop finest,” the press has written when, in fact, I was featuring a brand-new Comme des Garçons suit! Rei Kawakubo gives us undercover glamour. We know how great her clothes look, but others just think we’re poor.
Bonus link: the Beast recently launched a fashion blog.
(Photo: Visitors look at the “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.” exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition, which will run from May 10 through August 19, 2012, features approximately 100 designs and 40 accessories by Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, and by Miuccia Prada from the late 1980s to the present, drawn from The Costume Institute’s collection and the Prada Archive, as well as other institutions and private collections. By Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.)
The Dish 