What happens to fashion in the museum?

Caro Fowler and Christophe Koné examine the relationship between fashion and the museum, asking what is gained—and lost—when garments become museum objects. Their conversation explores the history of fashion exhibitions, the transformation of couture into cultural heritage, the decline of home sewing and pattern culture, and the changing relationship between clothing, the body, and materiality. Moving between the Met's new fashion galleries, archival practices, and contemporary museum displays, they consider how museums shape the ways we understand fashion as both a historical artifact and a living cultural practice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello and welcome to Iconoclass Art History with Carol. It must have been about a year ago when I was somewhat devastated to discover that one of my favorite museum gift shops, the one in the entrance hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one with a great museum bookshop, and a pretty solid swag area for my kids, was closing to be replaced by the Conde Nast galleries. Upon reflection, I realized that there was some irony in my disappointment over the closing of a museum gift shop to be replaced by galleries dedicated to fashion, as both intersect with the role of museums in our capitalist economies in different and fascinating ways. Moreover, there then began a series of somewhat boring debates about whether or not fashion actually belongs in the museum. And it seems to me that's not really the question. More the question should be what does fashion gain and what does it lose by entering into the space of the museum? My friend Christophe Conet is writing a biography on Carl Lagerfeld, and he's always fun to talk to about all things fashion. So thanks for listening to this conversation about fashion and the museum and whether or not it's always a win for fashion to be in the museum. Thanks for joining me today, Christoph.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Thank you for the invitation, Carol.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

So I suggested that we start by probably putting our individual relationship to fashion on the table, kind of like a disciplinary orientation. Um and I thought that an easy way to do that would just to be say, what are we wearing right now? as though we are on the podcast runway. But but we could but you can put it forward in any way that you like. How would you like to go about addressing your personal relationship to fashion?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Oh, that's a good question. I'm obsessed with fashion. I love fashion. What should I say? Fashion, fashion is a very important part of my life, plays a big role. I usually follow fashion designers. I try to find out what's trendy, what's not. I'm always looking at you know who's the new designer, what is the designer everybody's talking about, what is the item, what is the it bag. So, yes, I buy fashion magazines, I I follow up, I follow fashion pretty religiously. It's very important to me. Because to me, it says a lot about a society, about a moment, and I'm also interested to see how I don't know, society, the culture is kind of addressing the anxieties of the moment. So I think fashion tells us a lot actually about the moment.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah. Do you want to tell us what? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

So it's hot today.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

So I am wearing a it's in the high 80s here in Williamsville.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, I'm wearing a pink t-shirt and I'm wearing pink short pink shorts. Are you gonna name the designer for the brand? A PC for the t-shirt, Puma for the shorts, and HM for the navy striped sweater I'm wearing.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So you're mixing high and low.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yes, a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

And just to keep it even, I just came from a workout in the basement, so I'm wearing Beyond Yoga leggings and a J. Crew tank top with a Beyond Yoga bralette underneath.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I love how this is stood in.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

One thing one thing that I will say that I just feel need to get out there, that I love about Generation Z. I I think that there's something about the millennials in that we tried to always wear ankle socks and pretend like we weren't really wearing socks when we were wearing socks, and somehow we wanted to hide the fact that we were protecting our shoes from our stinky feet, and so we like tried to hide that we were wearing ankle socks. And what I love about Generation Z that I feel like I've learned from them is that they're just like, fuck it, like the world is messed up, and I'm gonna show my ankle socks, and I'm gonna show my socks.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yes, but also keep in mind that you know, even the things that are not trendy then become trendy. I remember, I mean, I grew up in France in Nice, I remember on the beach Riviera, on the beach promenade, sorry, looking at Germans, I shouldn't say that, but yeah, these were German tourists, and they're wearing socks and birkenstock, and back in the 80s, this was the most horrendous thing you could do. And now, you know, here I am wearing socks and birkenstock, and thinking this is really cool, actually. So, you know, I match colorful socks and birkenstock, and I think it's a fashion statement. So I think all I'm trying to say is everything can be a fashion statement. And I remember listening, one thing it was Jean-Paul Gautier who said that actually, or Carl Lagerfeld, I don't remember, who said that vulgar can be very interesting. Yeah, vulgar is interesting. That's true. So things that you think are so horrendous can become a fashion statement. I think if you have the right attitude, if you have enough confidence, everything is a fashion statement.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

So we're here to discuss not our own individual relationship to fashion really, but to discuss the role of fashion in the museum. And I pulled up a quote that did you know this quote before I circulated it to you? Okay. So it's by Emily Wilson in Adorned Dreams in 1985, and I'm just gonna read it. So she said, There is something eerie about a museum of costume. A dusty silence holds still the old gowns and glass cabinets. In the aquatic half-light to preserve the fragile stuffs, the deserted gallery seems haunted. The living observer moves with a sense of mounting panic through a world of the dead. May not these relics like the content of the Egyptian tombs bring bad luck to those who have been in contact with them. There are dangers in seeing what should have been sealed up in the past. We experience a sense of the uncanny when we gaze at garments that had an intimate relationship with individuals long since to their graves. For clothes are so much part of our living, moving selves that frozen on display in the mausoleums of culture, they hint at something only half understood, sinister, threatening, the atrophy of the body and the effinescence of life. So it's a great opening passage. But what I found so interesting about it is that I would argue. So that's an experience I have, say, when I go into European palace museums, you know, and they have often those darkened galleries of the various gowns of the um royals, um, which is actually a feeling I kind of love. Like I take deep pleasure in it. Um and I would say that fashion exhibitions now in museums seem to very actively work against all of those tropes. So the gall the galleries are always really well lit, and that they've somehow managed to amazingly sanitize any sense of death, mausoleumness, tomb-like quality, that they have somehow exorcised this from the display of fashion.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Would you say that's what I would agree, and actually I'm gonna tell you a little anecdote because this is what this quote reminds me of. So a few years ago, I was doing research at in London at the central St. Martin's, and I was able to go on a tour at the VNA uh and visit their restoration department. So with these fashion students, and we were invited, we talked to one of the curators, explained to us how they were, you know, conserving, repairing, you know, all garments. And on display, she pulled out, that curator pulled out a Balenciaga gown, but it was inside out. Because she wanted us to actually look at the way you know Cristobal Balenciaga had actually shaped that gown, and you know, it was pretty interesting. I mean the whole architecture, and you name it. But that gown was actually stained, so the hem was black and really dirty, and there were uh uh sweat stains underneath the armpits. And my first reaction, I was disgusted. I thought that was horrendous. I was like, oh, how can you show us this? And and we spent a long time looking at this ball gown, and the more I looked at that gown, and the more I started liking that gown, because that gown was telling me a story. This was a woman who loved to dance, right? That was that's this is the reason why the hem was so dark and so brown and so stained. The though she was dancing a lot, that's why there was so much sweat. I mean, it was completely yellow, the you know, the underarm, the armpit. And I and I told myself, oh, this is interesting. I was disgusted because that's not the kind of gown I'm expecting to see at a museum because everything is so sanitized. At the same time, what this dress was telling me was telling me the story of the person who actually wore the dress, was telling me the social life of that you know upper class woman who partook in so many gala and and balls, but suddenly that gown you know was almost 3D, and I felt like that gown was telling me much more than just Isabella Anciaga gown, beautifully constructed. Look at the hem, look at this, look at that, look at the beautiful materials. And so I'm telling you that story because this is not really happening at museums, actually. Yeah, I wish actually we were they were turning some gowns upside down. I wish we were looking sometimes at the you know at holes because I I was you know taking a peek at some of the garments at the Met when I checked the body art exhibit, and you can tell when you get very close that they're actually they've been repaired. I don't know why there's this constant need to. I mean, I also get it, right? I mean I don't think any of us wants to look at games that are that are dirty or stained. This is not what we expect from a museum, but the same way we have no problem showing fragments, right? If you look at Greek sculptures, we look at fragments and we have no problem. I'm sure we could also look at dresses that are torn, that are missing pieces, and you know, most of I mean not most, but some some garments, you know, from the past, they have been altered. Most of them were altered, right? And that was also custom that you know you were buying a wedding dress, and that wedding dress was becoming something else. So and and that history is also interesting to us. So, yes, to answer your your question, yes. And I would also add that you know fashion has a weird relationship with the body. Fashion needs the body, we need a body because you know, again, really exists when it moves, when it's inhabited by a body. At the same time, you know, the perfect the perfect body is the dead body because this is a body that doesn't move, that is immobile, and this is always the tension, I feel like, with fashion. That on some level you want a perfect body that would not alter, that would not age, that would not move, that would remain the same all the time. And at the same time, you also need a body that moves because I feel like you know, depending on you know the garment you're looking at, you want to see your body in them evolving through space. This is when I feel like a game really comes to life, and that's the reason why we have runway shows.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

I mean, obviously, every designer is different. Do you think designers think more in terms of static than movement?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

That's a good question. I think that would depend on uh the designer. But you know, for the designers I'm thinking of that actually work on, you know, yeah I don't know what's the term in English is on on you know the the we call it entrenchment can cabine, which is a real model that would work with the designer, and the designer would pin down the dress on them. It's clear to me that they need a living body. And most of the time when you watch those documentaries, they ask the model to walk. That's the first thing when the designer is done pinning down the game, it was like, okay, now walk, because I need to see how that dress would evolve. So I feel like it's both. But you know, I also have to say that the the I think the training of designers has also changed. They are software nowadays, right? Fewer and fewer designers know how to draw and sketch because now everybody uses the computer. So I I think the technique is also changing because the technology is also evolving, and I also believe that designers nowadays receive a different training.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Somebody like you know, or if Saint Laurent, their training was sketching, they were sketching, which I think is no longer the custom among designers.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, that gets into the second thing I wanted to discuss, which is one of the things that you and I started discussing when we talked about maybe doing this episode, is the ways in which we both remember going to fabric stores when we were young and pulling down those bolts of fabrics and going through the different patterns. And my mom was an amazing seamstress, and we would pick out what I wanted her to make, and we pick out the fabric and the pattern, and we go home and then she'd make it. And I think that, you know, there's so many reasons why that is no longer the case, from the fact that my mom went to a girl girl school where home economics was part of her education to a massive change in the way that fabrics are produced through the fashion fashion industry and many, many things. But I did a little research before this episode that I shared with you that I thought was super fascinating, which is that Mr. Condé Nast, now the name of the new galleries at the Met, was himself fundamental to the emergence of the fashion pattern. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

I didn't know, I did know that.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

I thought I thought it was so interesting. So he bought Vogue magazine in 1909, and then in 1914, the Vogue Pattern Company was born. And basically all of these patterns were pirated and illegal after Couture fashion houses until 1949, when essentially they started officially licensing to pattern companies, and Vogue launched Vogue Paris Original, which was couture patterns of Dior and Givenchy and Saint Laurent and many others. And then interestingly, this history came to an end on May 30th, 2025, when the big pattern brands were all sold to a liquidation firm for one dollar. So I think that there's something to be said, and I don't really know how to pull this out, but I do find it fascinating that in May 2025, the licensed pattern tradition that Condé Nast himself built was liquidated for a dollar. And then in May 2026, his name goes up over the Mets new fashion galleries recruited now of something that you can access behind glass. So I think in some ways this gets to the question of what does fashion have to gain by going into the museum? Like, why does fashion want to go into the museum? Because as we've discussed, there's a lot that you lose by entering into the mausoleum of the museum. And so and so I thought this might be kind of a good place to think about, you know, what fashion has to gain by going into the museum.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

So I I would say this that, you know, the I don't have the date, but I think the first fashion exhibit went up on Yves Saint-Laurent at the Met in the 80s, and I think that was Dana Vrilland. I think if my recollection is correct. So it was not it was not so obvious back in the days. And if you were to ask Carl Lagerfeld, Valentino, those people never thought of themselves as artists. They always defined themselves as craftsmen. And Lagerfeld until the end of his life, and maybe there's some kind of coquetry on his hand, on his part, but he never saw himself as an artist. And Lagerfeld never wanted to have a retrospective about himself. He was against it, and it's actually not random that they did it after his death. Because I think if he had been alive, he always refused to do it. So all I'm saying is that the relationship between fashion designers and museums is actually it's not a straight line and it's not a given. Especially I would say maybe with older designers, and most of them have actually passed over passed away. Maybe with the new generation of designers, it's a different relationship with museum and museum culture. What also what re what your code actually, what your the information you provided me with, reminds me of, it's the kind of change of relationship we have to clothing. If you think of pattern making, you know, I also grew up with a mother who actually knew. I mean, she was buying fashion magazines, she was using the pattern, and she was designing pants for us. It was not always a huge success. I remember one pants in particular when I was a child, I did not really like to wear. I hope my mother's not listening to this podcast. But all I'm saying is if you think about, you know, you know, I don't know, buying a Vogue magazine on a weekly or you know, bi-weekly basis, collecting those patterns, going to a fabric store, touching fabric, right, inquiring about what kind of fabric you want for that kind of particular clothes, I feel like the tactile the tactile element of fashion is lost on us. If the only place for me to look at clothes is you know, designer clothes is actually either through a window display of uh, you know, I am designer boutique on Madison Avenue, for instance, or at a museum, you know, the the I or Instagram, it's just the image that we're looking at. And and again, you know, last weekend I went to the Brooklyn Museum to check the IS Van Harpen and then at the uh met the costume institute to check the uh body art costume art exhibit. I want to touch the fabric. I want I I would love to touch, and I feel like that element is completely lost. At FIT, I remember they did an exhibit on the Cabinet of Curiosities, and I was actually very happy because you could touch things, and then I'm like a child, I touch everything. But I feel like to me this is an element that is missing in those fashion exhibits because we wear clothes, you know, there's an intimate relationship with the body, and I feel like the only I think what we're consuming is just the image of the garment. We're invited to look, we're inviting to admire, we're invited to imagine ourselves in those garments, but that's it. Also, what struck me this time at the at the Custom Institute is the mannequin's face was actually truncated in half, and instead of the face there were mirrors.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

So I was really interested.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, there's been a lot of feedback on look at myself looking or imagine what I would would look like, or if I were to wear those clothes, or looking at myself. I mean it was kind of a little uncanny, I have to say. Interesting, but uncanny.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

So long story short, I feel also most of the mannequins are like these, you know, I mean uh elongated, like museum white wall, long-limbed, lithe.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And all white, yeah, white. Yeah, yeah, yeah. White figures. It was a bit strange. I did, you know, I kind of like when things are a little uncanny. So I thought that was interesting. And I tried to take a picture, which didn't really work, because then then you have your phone image on the face of the mannequin. So it didn't really work, or I'm not a very talented photographer, I should say. But yeah, it was strange. But but to go back to your question, I think what's missing is the tactile element. We don't engage with the fabric, we don't we no longer engage with with the the making of a garment because you know there's a very tactile element, you know, it's cutting, it's sewing, it's it's so all of this is is gone.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

But I think that it just makes high fashion seem more accessible, no? If you can buy the pattern and buy the fabric and make it at home, uh high f the the economic divide of high fashion uh is less stark, no?

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Whether fashion is more or less accessible, I don't know, because you know you you are within the space of a museum, so I don't know how accessible it is. On some level it seems uh accessible because it's in front of you, but it but it's elevated, it's out of reach, it's at a certain distance from you. It kind of mimics the window display, even though this is not for sale. I don't know actually how accessible uh it is.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Well, what I would argue it does maybe is it places so for example with the Met Gala, I'm you know, I'm not someone who follows fashion. I don't follow it, I'm not particularly interested in it, you know, it's it's just not my thing. Um I like clothes, but I don't like fashion. But the Met Gala, I feel like gets a general audience to pay attention to fashion one night of the year. Like no matter what, you pay attention to fashion one night of the year. And there's one night of the year where I think a little bit about fashion in a kind of engaged critical way. And it seems to me that by entering into the space of the museum with something like a large gallery on the ground floor of the Met, in which it's now Egyptian art, Greek art, fashion, that it that it continues that night of the Met Gla gala within popular consciousness beyond that single night potentially.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Absolutely. And and it puts this is actually what I liked about the you know the the new costume institute. It's it's on the same level as everything else. So you're invited to consider fashion as art. I mean to me it's a statement that fashion is art. And to a certain extent it is. So I thought it was interesting. But at the same time I was also reminded or I was asking myself, why do those gangs always need to be paired with an artworks? And on some level I'm like, is it a problem of legitimacy? Are we still trying to show people that fashion is on the same level as art? Is it a way to emphasize that one is maybe greater than the other? Is art, you know, at a higher level than fashion? Is fashion at a higher level than art? I I'm also interested in those pairings because they're also not that simple. I think there's a lot of dynamics.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

But I feel like by doing that pairing, it draws it into a false binary or relationship. You know, like I w for example, and maybe this is they would never would have done this exhibition, but what if you just did say an exhibition on the kimono and you just brought in the history of the kimono, the silk industry, the incredible patterns, the evolution, the ways in which it changed, East India trading companies, you know, the westernization of the kimono, the ongoing kimono, you know, if you did like a breakdown of the history of the kimono and just took the kimono as an object very seriously, as you might take seriously a certain tradition of Western European painting, or you might take seriously a certain form of ceramic work. You know, if you just took seriously a certain fashion form, then I feel like this argument over whether or not fashion is art disappears because then we see we see a historical understanding of of thinking about what it meant to engage with the living, with the with the moving body.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I would totally agree. I saw actually a few years ago in Paris, a musée du Québranly, there was an amazing exhibit on the kimono, and they were only kimonos, only kimonos from I don't know what century to the present, and it was amazing. I agree. I don't know, you know, again, I went to see Aris van Arpen in the Brooklyn Museum, and they're pairing her fashion design with artworks. So there's this constant dialogue between artworks and fashion that is I mean, to to me there's always tensions, and the tension is also where do you put the artwork? Do you put the artwork in front of the garment? Do you put it behind? Do you put it on the same level? Do you put it underneath, above? It's it's never simple. And to me, you know, as a fashion lover, I don't think I need all those artifacts next to the garment. I think the garments are enough. But maybe for a more mainstream audience, for people who are not that familiar with fashion, maybe that helps them to read the garment in a certain way.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

In some ways that gets to another point that that I that you know I put out there we could talk about, which is Valerie Sfield's great essay, A Museum of Fashion is More Than a Clothes Bag, which argues that fashion exhibitions really should be rigorously historical exercises that take fashion seriously as a historical object. So I guess I'd just be kind of curious for you as a as a scholar of fashion, what types of rigorously historical exhibitions would you like to see within the space of the museum?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

So I've seen some. So the the the fashion exhibit that Valerie Steele at FIT at the museum uh puts up with our team are extremely rigorous. Yeah. Um, I mean they're they're excellent. I have to say the fashion exhibit at FIT are just phenomenal. But also I think the audience is a different one, right? It's FIT. Yeah. So this is catered to fashion historians, fashion theoreticians, fashion students, people who know a lot about the history of fashion. So that's the reason why those exhibits have a very strong thesis statement. They're heavily researched. However, I would say I've seen also, you know, uh uh very good, uh very well historically researched exhibit at the Met. You know, if I think of uh Superfine, Black, I think it was Black Tailoring, if my recollection is correct, it was just phenomenal. It was heavily researched, lots of historical artifacts. It was an amazing exhibit. So I think I think it depends on the theme. I think the the the the these are I mean, you know, people like me go to the Met to see the fashion exhibits, but I can also I would imagine that also some people go to the Met for the first time, and then since they're at the Met they would also check out the fashion exhibit. So I think it's a different audience.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

I mean you've posited before that some that that you have a sense that entering into the space of the museum transformed the relationship that designers had to their collections.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Do you want to expand?

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Sure. So you know, before I think before fashion enters the museums or the museum singular, the you know, fashion house used to destroy the pattern, the sketches. You know, when the collection was over, nobody was keeping any records.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

It was meant to be because presumably it was also like craftsman kind of intellectual property that they didn't want people to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Absolutely. And and then, you know, and once the code if the collection was successful, then nothing was left. And that was a sign that the collection was successful, right? From the moment fashion enters the museum, then you know, this is the moment when fashion houses start thinking about archives. They start contacting former clients and they start buying back clothing because they don't have you know any any any yeah, any proofs, any any former garments. So I think it completely changes the relationship. So it's no longer something that is you know made to be sold, but then it becomes something that is meant to be conserved. So it's a completely different relationship. And and you know, now you also see that some garments are being sold at auction houses, so Sophobie's Christie's. So it just means that some, you know, I don't know, some collection, I don't know, by Yves Saint Laurent or Chanel from the 30s and Yves Saint Laurent from the 70s are highly sought-after collectibles that are gonna go up for auction and gonna cost a lot of money. So then fashion becomes as expensive as paintings or enter that kind of same of relationship, which originally was not meant to be. Those garments, those designer garments have a have a life on their own. But you know, there's this beautiful essay by Bourdieu who talks about haute culture, haute couture, and he talks about a lot about the label. You know, what is the difference between a jacket and a Chanel jacket? It's the label. I mean, beyond the design and you know the amount of time and hours. So the label, the label says something. And and and I think the labels gives also a different type of what's what I'm looking for. I think the label gives a different identification to the garment, right? It's no longer a jacket, it's a Chanel jacket, so it's a different realm, right? And then of of course, then it it has a second life.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah. But do you think that wearing a Chanel ja I mean or just remove let's remove any name because obviously Chanel's all designers have their own identities, but do you think that what it means to wear a a fashion label is very it's different now than say it was in 1930 or 1940? I mean, do you think it holds a different resonance in terms of where our society is?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

But I would say two things. So if I think, let's say in the twenties and thirties, I would assume that many women knew how to sew. Right? So if you were uh a skilled seamstress, once you had the pattern, you could find the same fabric and you could do your own Chanel jacket. And if you were very talented, I think you could have done something close, I would say, right? This is no longer the case today. I mean, unless you received a particular training, I think most of us don't know how to use a sewing machine and how to uh sew. So the only way for us to have access to something to some quality, I mean some high-quality garment would be actually to buy a designer gown. But it is also not as simple. I think we're also talking about status symbols, right? Uh at the same time, you know, I do like fashion and I do wear high high-end designers, some things fit really, really well. You know, the the and you know, it's not that I wear custom made clothing. I wish I could afford, but I I can't. But it's obvious to me that when you were when you wear something that is custom made, I mean this is night and day. But but I would also say this is also the difference between couture and and ready-to-wear, right? Ready-to-wear starts, I would say, maybe in the 60s. This is a complete different understanding of the body, right? Up to 1960s, um everything was custom made. If you if you were going to a tailor, this is also what men used to do. You were going to a tailor, and the tailor was designing a suit for you. Right? That was standard. Yeah. Nowadays we have sizes, right? So 42, 44, L, XL, M. This is also pretty recent. So so I all of this to say that I think the the understanding actually of fashion has changed. The understanding also of our body has also changed. And also, we also you know, that's also the beauty is also when you look at I don't know, 18th century garments, you realize that as a species, we have evolved because people were much smaller back in the days. Once I wanted to purchase, I wanted to purchase actually a vest. There was an 18th century vest for auction, and I was I was still in Paris back then, and I called a person, and the person said, For whom do you want to be? Are you 10 years old? Are you 10? I'm like, no. She's like, there's no way, there's no way you can wear this. So anyway, sorry, I I I digress. And and and I follow no and I follow certain designers and have a mental checklist, and I'm like, I need to have that item for from that designer. And I do have a mental checklist, I I really mean it.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Would you share anything that's on your mental checklist right now?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Uh oh yes, I can. So what I need to have in my closet is I don't have a Rick Owen leather jacket. That I would like to own one. Hold on, what else?

SPEAKER_00 32:58

And do you when you say that, do you want to go for the Rick Owen jacket? Because sometimes I feel like fashion magazines you'll know they'll say, here's the original, and then here's like the the knockoff.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

No, no, no, I want I want the original.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Hold on. Like I wanted badly a Bellman jacket. I have one. So yeah, they're their items. And and I think it's not, I mean, you know, I think I I don't know. In my case, I don't think it's a status symbol. It's it's because I admire the work of those designers. And this is this is this is as if I wanted a painting, right? So I I really admire Olivier Rosta. I really like I like everything about this guy, what he stands for, what he did, the diversity on the runway, the different body types he embraces. I really, really like this guy, also as a you know, mixed-race person becoming the top designer in you know in the in the in the fashion industry. So I I like everything about this guy. It was important for me to own a piece of you know a jacket. So that's why. And I'm very interested by Rick Obens. I don't think I have the body type to wear Rick Obens. But I I I love I love the the I love his leathers. I love the fact that his this is coming from this kind of underground gothic LA scene, and this is also what I see in his leather jackets. I think this is this whole tradition that is also bringing. So that's what I'm also interested in. And leather is also interesting, you know, it's a second skin.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah. Well, I love that. It's hard, it's hard to wrest fashion from the overt consumption of the increasing class divide within the United States, I feel, and the kind of let them eat cake feeling that tends to come increasingly with the Met Gala. But I think in the way that you just described fashion as kind of an appreciation for for certain individuals and their vision in the world and the way that they think about dressing bodies in the world to fit our moment, I think I think that's a really nice way to think about it.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

You know, there's the there's somebody else I'm thinking right now, is also Tom Brown. So it's kind of interesting what Tom Brown is also doing. So no, I think I think I I really respect and admire certain fashion designers because I think they're telling us something about the body, about gender, about the relationship we have to the world, how fashion designers are reacting to the current moment. Caroline Evans is an amazing fashion historian, wrote this seminal book, Fashion at the Edge, and it's all about 90s anxiety. What's happening in the 90s with the war in the Balkans and you know all that is happening in the world and how that impacts actually fashion and the way fashion designers are actually reflecting about decay, death, trash. So all of this infuses the work of designers. So that's the reason why I take fashion very seriously, and I and I'm always looking at what's happening because to me this is kind of almost a themometer. This is a way for me it gives me it gives me the temperature of the world. So and and I don't think I mean, you know, yes, you know, yeah, the Met Gala feels sometimes uh as if we're looking at a spectacle of people who are completely disconnected from the world, but I don't know how disconnected they are in the end. And the choice of the designer they make also says something about the world. So so to me, yeah. So in the end I don't think they're that detached. Whether they want it to be or not. You know, I we're not even talking about the dieting that went before fitting into the gown or fitting into the suit, the number of hours at the gym. So, you know, it's also interesting to see. I mean, you know, you usually traditionally it should be the other way around, right? I think clothes should adjust to our body, but it's also interesting to see that also that tension between the body and the garment, because the primal function of the body is actually to protect, and the primal function of the garment is to protect the body. So I think the garment should fit the body and not the other way around. I mean the body is not an armor unless it has become an armor, and on some level it has become an armor nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Yeah, well that's for sure. Well, final question that I ask everyone, or I try to, sometimes I forget. But what are you doing in your life right now outside of work that you really enjoy that has nothing to do with your work?

SPEAKER_01 37:45

So I I have I mean, I was about to say uh it's an old obsession, but I'm obsessed again with Madonna and the confession to album and especially the video clip she released, Denseteria, which is extremely interesting. It's so self-referential. It's quoting seeking Susan desperately, ray of light. I mean, it's just it's uh there's so many hints. I mean, I I am fascinated. The video clip is really good, the music is good. Yeah, I think Madonna is back. It's yeah, really I'm a little obsessed. So I went I went on forum because people are really deciphering every single moment of the video clip.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

It's extremely rich, it's extremely well done, it's very smart, and yeah, I think But have you have you seen it penetrate into the larger pop culture conversation, or is this only happening among Madonna Alkolites?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

I think so. I would say right now it's among Madonna Alkolite, but everybody's talking about the album, everybody's expecting that album that's gonna release on July 3rd. The date the date is important too. And and I think this is I I'm pretty psyched, and I think this is going to be a pop cultural moment again.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Really? That's great. I'm just curious because Madonna's never done it for me. I just what what is it about Madonna that you love?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

I think it's the constant reinvention, it's the fact that she always has a finger on the pulse, and and I think I like also after a while when artists become self-ref referential, and it's not empty, right? Sometimes it becomes circular, but it's not, it's absolutely not. She mimics I think she's she's done in the past or she did in the past, but take them to a different level. Um I was really blown away by that video clip. I was like, this is good, this is smart, this is edgy, this this is really good. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So that's my new obsession.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

I'll look it up, I'll look it up. I'll definitely look it up. I always think that must be so hard for a pop star to age. Yeah, you know, because because the whole like fashion, pop, pop culture is you are of a moment, and kind of the nature of it is that you can only be of that moment, and it's hard in pop culture to be transcendent. So pop artists who are able to really be outside of their moment um are impressive.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

No, that's true, that's true. But the the look look at the video clip. It's it's really good. It looks really good.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

I promise. Thank you. Well, here, I'm gonna hit stop record. Thank you for listening to iconoclass art history with Caro. This episode was produced by myself with sound editing by CJ De Gennaro and additional support from Noelle Dirksen and Sean S. Malls. For any questions, feedback, I don't know, thoughts, uh feel free to reach out, cfowler at clerkheart.edu. Please do hit like or subscribe. And this is it. We're out for the season. Um, I hope you all have lovely, restful, restorative summers. I always have really big research writing plans, and then I end up driving my children to summer camp all around the Berkshires, and I never get done what I plan. But I wish you all productive, lovely summers, and we will be back in the fall. All right, thanks so much for listening.