While visiting FIT for the 50 Years of The Museum at FIT exhibition, the object that stood out most to me was the Spring 2015 Chromat Ensemble. This ensemble included a black corset styled body-suit with a fitted chest under a stiff dress outline. Featured in 2017’s The Body: Fashion and Physique- the ensemble and its other pieces from the exhibition explore, “the complex history of the “ideal” fashion body and the variety of body shapes that have been considered fashionable from the eighteenth century to the present. The exhibition also examined the relationship between fashion and body politics. …. [Majority of the garments] demonstrate how the fashion industry has contributed to both the marginalization and celebration of certain body types within our culture” (“The Body: Fashion and Physique” FIT, 2017-2018. www.fitnyc.edu). This ensemble embodied the description of the exhibition from 2017 as it displays a corset and outline for a dress which women wore in past centuries for fashion. I believe this piece also examines the correlation between “fashion and body politics” as it shows the social norms for past female fashion and today’s reimagined version of the corset in the fashion world.
I believe there is salience to including fashion and fashion history in museums. Fashion has supported and rebeled certain social norms throughout history that play a role in politics and certain time periods. Without proof of fashion from the past, we would not be able to explore norms as in-depth as we do today. For example, uniform. We learn so much from time periods with past uniforms for events such as war- the importance of such history varies from what fabric or thread was used, to where this was made and by who, the materials of that uniform can tell us what the weather was like that year and so on. The article “Gone Global: Fashion as Art” by Suzanne Menkes discusses whether fashion is truly an art form, after reading this article I feel even more than I did prior to reading it that fashion is art. Fashion provokes inspiration, it intrigues audiences from all kinds of different places and is moving. In a way, fashion is like socially engaged art- one can rebel from certain political, societal or cultural norms through dress. It is rich with history and aspirational for many.
