Looking back on the year in fashion headlines, a trend that stands out most glaringly is that of creative director positions at the world’s most esteemed luxury houses going almost exclusively to white men.
As Fashionista reports, it’s sparked an industry-wide conversation (and some widely-shared graphics) about the lack of recognition for female designers when it comes to these highly coveted, prestigious appointments.
Amid the recent wave of hirings, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its Fall 2023 exhibition: “Women Dressing Women” (open now through March 3, 2024), which endeavors to “explore the work of both widely celebrated and lesser-known women designers and women-led fashion houses from the 20th century to the present, surfacing a series of intergenerational conversations that underscore ideas related to women’s social progress as charted through fashion,” according to a press release.
That was mid-August. In the weeks that followed, Sabato de Sarno made his debut at Gucci, Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford, Simone Bellotti at Bally, Stefano Gallici at Ann Demeulemeester; Sarah Burton announced she was leaving Alexander McQueen, and Kering named Seán McGirr as her replacement. Suddenly, “Women Dressing Women” felt more prescient.
Really, the Costume Institute had been working on this exhibit for many years now. It was originally meant to go up in the fall of 2020, timed to the centennial of the Women’s Suffrage movement. It had been on the mind of Associate Curator Mellissa Huber even longer.
“I have long wanted to organize a show focused on the work of women fashion designers — by long, I mean for well over a decade,” she says. “My interest in organizing a show from that perspective stems, in part, from my interest in the interwar period, which is a unique moment in fashion history in which women actually outnumbered men in leading the creative direction of fashion. It also happens to be a period of incredible modernity and change in dress, and there’s this incredible synthesis of beauty and artisanship happening along with this interest in streamlining and improving, if you will, elements of fashion.”
When Karen Van Godtsenhoven, who co-curated the exhibit, joined the Met a few years ago (she’s since left and gone freelance), she brought a similar pitch to Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu curator in charge. He suggested they work together to create what became “Women Dressing Women”.
Despite it having to be pushed back due to the pandemic, “the museum and Andrew have been incredibly supportive of the project, so they really worked to ensure that we were able to keep it on the calendar,” says Huber. They didn’t just sit on the project, though.
“Though the show didn’t change so dramatically over the years, perhaps the most substantial change was our ability to add new acquisitions to our permanent collection, because it’s a collection-based show,” Huber explains, noting that the Costume Institute was able to bring in pieces that came out during that period. (One of the most recent items on display is from Tory Burch‘s Resort 2024 collection.)
According to Fashionista, “Women Dressing Women” features 80 objects from the 20th century onwards, from more than 70 makers. “We wanted to include pieces that aren’t regularly shown along with some greatest hits, if you will,” Huber says. Some highlights include a white cotton dress with pink and green silk taffeta carnations by Ann Lowe, a glass-bead- and silver-feather-embroidered gown by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen Spring 2012, Phoebe Philo‘s Céline-Yves Klein Blue dress and the Kinshasa dress from Hanifa‘s viral Pink Congo Label collection. There are also a significant number of pieces from designers who may be lesser known to the broader public.
“When we were tallying the numbers recently, I was shocked to realize that 50% of the show basically has never been shown before, for a variety of reasons — 15 objects were very recent acquisitions with this exhibition in mind, some came into the collection in the last decade and hadn’t had their moment yet, some may have had conservation issues and we were able to dedicate a little more time to working with them in anticipation of the project… When it came to that selection, we’re thinking about chronology, about a variety of names, about trying to represent a really eclectic, diverse range of voices, styles, methodologies and time periods to convey the richness of women’s contributions to the field.”
The exhibit is organized around four ideas: anonymity, visibility, agency, absence/omission. It recognizes the trajectory from unnamed dressmaker to namesake brand founder, as well as the diversity in the output of these creators, how fashion has played a role in women coming into their power and the ways this all intersects with other aspects of identity. Notably, this is represented in how certain pieces are displayed within “Women Dressing Women” — for example, the mannequin wearing a polychrome-printed deadstock lace bodysuit by Collina Strada is modeled after Aaron Rose Phillip (who debuted the look on the brand’s runway) and includes a wheelchair from Pride Mobility/Quantum Rehab; the one for a black polyester satin dress by Customiety, a Danish brand that makes accessible clothing for people with achondroplasia, is modeled after Sinéad Burke.
“Personally, I don’t believe that gender necessarily informs one’s approach to design — but I do believe very strongly that lived experience does,” Huber argues. “One of the things that we really hope that people take away from the show is that so many of these women were working in such a variety of different ways. They all come to the field with their own background, education, creative methodologies, interests, aesthetics and personal attributes like age, race, size and ability. We try to bring those perspectives to the fore and not present the idea of womanhood as this monolith.”
For Huber, it was very important to convey that “not every woman creates the same” — though, she does acknowledge that “women have a certain advantage when it comes to understanding the female body, bearing in mind that the female body has so much variance to it in terms of its needs… There are definitely women designers who have really focused on that aspect of comfort and ease and brought that freedom to dress, but we’re wary of the show presenting this idea that all women design practically and for themselves, and that men are the artistic geniuses who drive the direction of fashion. We hope what’s clear to the viewer is that, in fact, women work in a very wide range of methodologies, and some of their clothing is quite impractical, but thought-provoking and beautiful.”
The team couldn’t have predicted what shake-ups would happen at the top of the fashion chain of command around the time “Women Dressing Women” opened, but the recent news cycle has, in a way, underlined the importance of exhibits like this.
“It’s certainly generated a little more interest and perhaps urgency from people to identify women designers, be able to share their work and have something to celebrate in this way,” Huber says, though she also hopes the exhibit emphasizes the fact that creative directors aren’t the only ones responsible for creating collections. “The industry comprises so many employees, many of which are women who are working across the board in any variety of roles, in all aspects of fashion creation. Perhaps if we pay a little more attention and spend more time acknowledging everyone’s [contributions] more holistically, it will become far more evident just how many options there are out there and how many voices there are contributing to the dialogue.”
“Women Dressing Women” is on display at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Fifth Avenue through March 3, 2024.
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