Queer History of Fashion: A huge success at Museum at FIT!

A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk featured approximately 100 ensembles, from 18th-century menswear styles associated with an emerging gay subculture to 21st-century high fashion.  

 

This was the first museum exhibition to explore in depth the significant contributions to fashion made by LGBTQ (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer) individuals over the past 300 years.

The fabulous exhibition curators Fred Dennis, senior curator of costume, along with the iconic and amazing  Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT, spent two years researching and curating the exhibition. They worked with an advisory committee of eminent scholars, including professors George Chauncey (author of Gay New York), Shaun Cole (author of Don We Now Our Gay Apparel), Jonathan Katz (author/curator ofHide and Seek), Peter McNeil (co-editor of The Men’s Fashion Reader), and Vicki Karaminas (co-editor of the forthcoming Queer Style), as well as FIT faculty and fashion professionals. 

 

 I was honored to work with the fabulous as always, Linda  Tain on the committee to give thoughts, ideas and brainstorms along with the amazing Vasilios for the exhibit. Here we are at the grand premiere event!

From Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior to Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, many of the greatest fashion designers of the past century have been gay. Organized in roughly chronological order, the exhibition explored the history of modern fashion through the lens of gay and lesbian life and culture, addressing subjects including androgyny, dandyism, idealizing and transgressive aesthetic styles, and the influence of subcultural and street styles, including drag, leather, and uniforms.

The AIDS crisis marked a pivotal mid-point in the exhibition. Clothing by a number of designers who died of AIDS, including Perry Ellis, Halston, and Bill Robinson, were featured, as will a wide range of activist T-shirts for ACT UP, Queer Nation, the Lesbian and Gay Rights March in Washington and the iconic Read My Lips. Emphasizing that gay rights are human rights, the exhibition concluded with a section on gay wedding fashions as the sartorial expression of the issue of marriage equality.

Oscar Wilde is another recognizable character whose style is referenced to detail the history of homosexuality and the history of style in the 19th century. 

In total, there will be 100 ensembles ranging from 18th-century men’s wear tied to an emerging gay subculture to 21st-century high fashion.

For the really daring, the curators have included a Jean Paul Gaultier skirt-pant look from his 1984 menswear collection—“The lender said he always felt very masculine wearing it,” Steele notes. And the show would not be complete without a Gaultier cone-bra corset dress, like the one famously worn by Madonna in 1990, which combines the imagery of a nurturing mother figure with that of a preening dominatrix. 

In the years that followed, kink became even less apologetic. Representing the late ’90s is an eye-popping all-black ensemble consisting of a severely cinched corset by the fetish legend Mr. Pearl, a cropped denim jacket, leather pants, a cap, and a pair of combat boots.

So, the show becomes a glamorous soup of clothes that goes back to styles from times when the closet was more like a bank vault, and people transmitted their sexual preferences though coded dress, and moves on to gender bending media figures like Marlene Dietrich and Noel Coward before turning to designers like Gianni Versace and Jean-Paul Gaultier whose designs became ever more exuberant as gays openly entered mainstream culture. 

Barneys "Ambassador"  Simon Doonan,  Designer John Bartlett and others are also featured in video interviews discussing what fashion means to them as gay people which further illuminates the show. At the event of the premiere with a red carpet affair, lots of familiar faces and yes, it was a huge success!