I recently saw the Costume Institute’s fall 2023 exhibit, Women Dressing Women, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibit covered the works of women designers in dressing people who identify as women from the turn of the 20th century to today, showcasing the beautiful and diverse creations of well-known names like Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli to those of emerging or niche designers. To tell the story of women dressing women, the exhibit was organized around the themes of anonymity, visibility, agency, and absence/omission.
Anonymity. As eponymous couture houses began emerging in the mid-1800s, so did the practice of labeling garments with the house name. This meant that artistic achievements in fashion were attributed to a single maker, when in reality fashion and design represented collective efforts, from the textile workers to premieres d’atelier, patternmarkers, seamstresses and embroiderers, many of whom were women.
Visibility. The interwar years in France marked a unique time when women designers outnumbered their male counterparts. Those women who had long worked behind the scenes at fashion houses rose through the ranks to become designers or business owners. In an industry where the fashion house’s success was tied to its figurehead, the lead couturier who set the house’s identity, the increased visibility was particularly important for those women designers who previously labored in obscurity as dressmakers.
Agency. With their newly-won agency in the 20th century, women designers in the U.S. and Europe looked for ways to distinguish themselves while succeeding in the competitive fashion industry. American ready-to-wear broke away from French haute couture and promoted many women as designers in the process. Mid-century designers Claire McCardell and Bonnie Cashin introduced elements to bring more freedom and ease to women’s clothing, lasting influences in contemporary dress. Boutique culture of the 1960s and 1970s was led by designers like Betsey Johnson, Vivienne Westwood, and Sonia Rykiel, who expressed progressive artistry and politics in their clothing. In the 1980s and 1990s, designers looked to disrupt conventional beauty standards and to design inclusively for previously overlooked groups. And many women working in contemporary fashion continue to explore how to design in a socially conscious way.
Absence/Omission. The core idea of Women Dressing Women was to build from the absence/omission within museum collections and the canon of fashion more broadly. Absence/omission may be in the form of missing maker attributions, due to poor recordkeeping, or result from the prioritization of established narratives. The pieces in the exhibit highlighted, and sought to bridge, the inequities encountered by women designers - the myth of the solo creative genius in design; women’s historically limited legal rights; the erasure of designers of color; and the exclusion of bodies outside traditional standards of feminine beauty.
Amazing as it was to see the designs of the many women included in the exhibit, women dressing women remains an ongoing endeavor. In “Going Backward Was the Biggest Trend of 2023,” published in The New York Times on December 19, 2023, fashion critic Vanessa Friedman noted that of the nine designers named to lead major fashion houses in 2023, there were one woman, one person of color and seven white men.
Pics & Captions
By the French House of Paquin, one of the earliest women-led fashion houses, this 1938 ivory silk organza evening dress was trimmed with the fur of a colobus monkey, now a protected species. The drama of the dress reflected Spanish designer Ana de Pombo’s theatrical flair.
This yellow and brown striped skirt suit by
American designer Betsy Johnson was worn by “Baby Jane” Holzer, a socialite, actress, and one of Andy Warhol’s “superstars” in 1966. Johnson’s campy style was personified by the Betsey Girls, a group of creative young women who wore her designs while living their best lives!
This 1993 “Kangaroo” dress by Cuban-born American designer Isabel Toledo is made of black rayon jersey and manipulated to pool at the stomach to create a pouch-like pocket. With her free-reign experimentation, Toledo was an imaginative designer with a deep understanding of textiles and construction. Toledo valued irreverence as much as comfort and practicality, often expressing these ideas in pockets which she enjoyed placing in unusual places.
Sources & Further Reading
I drew extensively from the exhibition notes to discuss the organizing themes behind Women Dressing Women. Click here for the museum’s webpage for this exhibit, which includes related video content and an anonymity slideshow. There is also an accompanying catalog, published by the Met, for the exhibition.
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