Colorful houses, waitress uniforms, a bodice made from sugar cubes, a shoulder box. These articles and many others offer a glance in personal cupboards through the exposure eras Real clothes, real life: 200 years of what women wore At the New York Historical (formerly Historical Society of New York) and a book of the same name (2023, Rizzoli Electa). From Smith College historic clothing collectionAn educational archive dedicated to the preservation of everyday women's clothing for women, the exhibited parts extended in the late 1800s to the present day. Each article of clothing, a work jacket with a tattered and patched lining (c. 1860) to a CHinking blue quinceañera dress (1982), tells the story of the life of women in the United States at home and at work, during leisure and ritual.
To examine how the clothes influence the life of the carriers and how their life, in turn, influences their clothes, the exhibition combines clothes and accessories with archive photos and objects from the museum Center for the history of women. The text placed on the Clear Plexiglas windows hovers over the details of the key construction of clothes and circles with useful annotations, which gives the impression of visiting a well -informed friend who points to the most relevant treats. The show is organized in sections dedicated to the public and private dress, work of work and unpaid interior service, protest and rebellion and rites of passage.
Unlike dominant fashion exhibitions, which dazzle with track looks and superstar creators, Real ClothesReal Lives focuses on homemade clothes or widely accessible (for example, Wrangler, Penney's and Lane Bryant) who really lived. Although the show includes a handful of pieces of famous figures, such as Sylvia Plath's room Girl scout uniform (1945) decorated with 20 rounds of round merit, most of the costume was worn by women who lived outside the spotlight. The relevant accessories give life to the workforce carried out in the outfits: the hand of a mannequin putting on a uniform nurse firm a bottle of pills, a handful of straws that slide from the pocket of a waitress uniform.
A can-do spirits, Make-Do crosses the exhibition. The turquoise morning packaging (c. 1895), a comfortable garment worn inside without bodice or petticoats, includes an adjusted sub-vehicle that could be adjusted to accommodate pregnancy and other body fluctuations. Whether it is sewing dresses with buttons rather than metal zippers to support the rationing efforts of the Second World War or buttoning skirts from the beginning of the 20th century in “leg partitions” adapted to the bicycle, women adapted their outfit to accommodate their daily activities with ingenuity and panache.
A show on everyday women's clothes also concerns their body and their tangible presence. Despite the insistence of the Trump diet on erase The word “women” of government documents and public -oriented websites, women, nevertheless exist and persist. Our bodies grow and change, bring life or do not do so, work and rest, love and cry, move and dance. There is a joy to imagine the woman in the 80s by washing her high-heeled heeled sneakers and the combination of Norma Kamali Peplum for an evening, and a feeling of relativity in the snapshot of a bride on the train of our on a hot dog from the city of the city after a wedding ceremony. Tenderness boils while imagining the maternity uniform of the navy blue polyester, a woman, a woman stretching the pale pink curler cap from the 1960s on a puff, or another sighing in the sofa after a long day, drawing a needle from a Mendier Hosiery kit for remedy yet another race. All these outfits in Real ClothesThe real lives are anchored with memories, both in the life of the wearer and associations and clothing stories that we bring them as viewers.
By turning our attention towards the ordinary, the exhibition, as the archives from which it was original, accomplishes something exceptional. This anchors us in the fabric of daily survival and acts of ingenuity, revealing ways to adapt, repair and reinvent – and to seem well, in our own terms, while doing it.
Real clothes, real life: 200 years of what women wore continues at the New York Historical (170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan) until June 22. The exhibition was organized by Rebecca Shea and Kiki Smith, as well as Anna Danziger Halperin and Keren Ben-Horin.
