FIT Museum: Fabric In Fashion [Relationship Between Fashion and Body]
The FIT museum is currently holding an exhibition called Fabric In Fashion. This exhibition explores the origin of specific fabrics and the relationship between the textile and the body. Fabric In Fashion focuses on Western fashion before the 20th century, and explains how different textiles create different silhouettes and designs of the garment.
As I entered the the exhibition Fabric In Fashion, a toile of 18th-century court gown was displayed in the corner of the gallery. Every couple of seconds, the projector was beaming different types of textiles that were in different time periods in other parts of the country. This garment was presented and displayed in the beginning of the exhibition, because it shows a visual understanding of how different fabrics on the same garment gives different impressions, feelings and aesthetics, which creates another look. Also, this piece gives an understanding of fashion history, because in the book Fashion and Cultural Studies by Susan B. Kaiser, she states,
Tying together how we look and how we think, time and space influence how we mind and manage our appearances (Kaiser 2001). [It] begins with a consideration of the Möbius-like interplay between time and space, enabling us to place in contexts and the intersecting subject positions… Then it proceeds to consider two subject positions: age/generation and place, which constitute how we experience time and space as we move through them in our styled-dressed-fashioned bodies. (Kaiser 2012, 285-6)
The textiles that are projected and displayed in the exhibition range from different time periods that are located in other countries. As the quote that I have provided above, time and space influences people’s style-dress-fashion. By looking at one garment with different textiles that came from different time and space, we can sort of understand and visualize the textile’s and the garment’s cultures and histories. Depending on the time and the origin of the fabric, the context and the history of the dress change.
Citation
Kaiser, Susan B. Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Berg Publisher, 2012.
