Enfilade

From the LACMA website:

Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2 October 2010 — 6 March 2011

Curated by Sharon Takeda and Kaye Spilker

Vest, France, 1789-94, Photo © 2010 LACMA

Man’s Suit, France, ca. 1760, Photo © 2010 LACMA

Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 celebrates the museum’s groundbreaking acquisition of a major collection of European men’s, women’s, and children’s garments and accessories.The exhibition tells the story of fashion’s aesthetic and technical development from the Age of Enlightenment to World War I. It examines sweeping changes in fashionable dress spanning a period of over two hundred years, and evolutions in luxurious textiles, exacting tailoring techniques, and lush trimmings.

Highlights include an eighteenth-century man’s vest intricately embroidered with powerful symbolic messages relevant to the French Revolution; an evening mantle with silk embroidery, glass beads, and ostrich feathers designed by French couturier Émile
Pingat (active 1860-96); and spectacular three-piece
suits and gowns worn at the royal courts of Europe.

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Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915, by Sharon Takeda, Kaye Spilker and Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, preface by John Galliano (Prestel, 2010), ISBN: 978-3791350622 $55.

Luxurious textiles, exacting tailoring, and lush trimmings abound in this glorious volume that celebrates the Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 exhibition at LACMA. Fashion is in the details. Textiles, tailoring, and trimmings all work together in the creation of the finest pieces. Drawing on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s internationally known fashion collection, this gorgeous book tells the story–in words and beautiful pictures–of fashion’s aesthetic and technical development from the Age of Enlightenment to World War I, a period when fashionable dress underwent sweeping changes. Many remarkable examples of men’s, women’s, and children’s garments are featured here for the first time, including an extraordinarily rare 1790s man’s vest designed to promote sympathy with the French Revolution; a stunning 1845 black satin gown from the royal court of Portugal heavily embroidered with gold; and an 1891 evening mantle with silk embroidery, glass beads, and ostrich feathers designed by French couturier Aemile Pingat. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in the evolution of fashion, this generously illustrated book provides a rich visual history of the changes that occurred in fashionable dress spanning a period of more than two hundred years.

Sharon Sadako Takeda is the Senior Curator and Head, Costume and Textiles Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Kaye Durland Spilker is Curator, Costume and Textiles Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. John Galliano, one of the most influential fashion designers of our time, is the chief designer of the haute couture house Christian Dior. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is a fashion-research scholar who writes and reviews books and exhibitions for Dress, Costume, and Woman’s Art Journal.