Rodarte,red and black silk chiffon, Fall 2008-2009, USA.
Courtesy of Rodarte. Photograph by Dan Lecca.
Unlike the living and the dying body, fashion is neither dead nor alive. Like the vampire, fashion is undead.
-Valerie Steele
As I descended the stairs into The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s lower galleries to view the exhibition “Gothic: Dark Glamour,” the 1 train rumbled by, shaking the building. How perfect—to have an ominous rumbling accompany my entrance into the dark and spooky show! Curator Valerie Steele and Art Director Simon Costin have pulled out all the stops with this moody and macabre exhibition; the walls of the galleries are painted pitch black, the wall text is printed on what appears to be the yellowed pages of ancient texts and the garments and accessories are displayed amid coffins, funereal obelisks, wrought iron fences and castle ruins. An examination of a more subtle trend or subculture would be drowned in all of the atmospheric excess, but the gothic fashions displayed here are, in fact, in the theatrical setting they were intended for.
The gothic subculture, as it is understood today, has its roots in the reign of Queen Victoria, who after the untimely death of her husband, Albert, wore mourning garb for most of the rest of her life. Her prolonged state of mourning inspired a fashion for deep and demonstrative mourning in her female subjects and their imitators overseas. During this period, women wore elaborate mourning gowns of black at all occasions for at least a year after the death of a close relative. Many of the accessories worn with these “widows weeds” mined the Medieval or Gothic fad for momento mori, small objects and adornments that featured skulls, bats and other symbols of death Gothic revival furniture and architecture was also in fashion at this time, as was the “gothic” novel. As the mourning mania waned and the rich-and-powerful’s tastes turned toward other styles, the word “gothic” took on a pejorative connotation. The gothic or “goth” look reentered popular consciousness in the 1980s with the success of bands like The Cure, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Bauhaus and films like The Hunger and later Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Crow. The contemporary street goth look is often a mix of Victoriana and cyber punk.
The history of the gothic subculture is well represented in the exhibition. The first gallery features a display of Victorian mourning costumes and accessories and a vitrine in the main gallery features the D.I.Y. looks of the street. A few of the high-end products of contemporary ready-to-wear gothic designers like Kambriel and Lip Service are also on view.
However, the majority of the show is given over to the couture interpretations of gothic. Most of the couture garments are from 2007 or 2008 collections, which means that viewers can get a look at the concepts and cuts that are already filtering down to ready-to-wear collections. Several of the fashions on display are from the usually flamboyant suspects John Galliano for Dior and Alexander McQueen and the masters of drape and shape Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, but the show is dominated by lesser known upstart designers from Japan and England: Undercover, Kei Kasumi, Christopher Kane, Boudicca and Gareth Pugh. Despite this embarrassment of designer riches, the most spectacular garment in the exhibition, in my opinion, is the lone example of a costume designed for a film, the blood red evening gown Winona Ryder wore as Mina in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
My only criticism of this eminently enjoyable show is that it can get a little cute. The artificial distinctions made in the groupings of the couture garments in the main gallery are generally tenuous at best and don’t necessarily warrant being placed on one spooky set or another. And the “Bat Cave" vitrine with the street goth looks, which had lights that were timed to only give the viewer flashes of the garments before plunging them back in to darkness, was simply frustrating.
Nevertheless, “Gothic” is a crowd pleaser. This is an exhibition that will amuse and entertain fashion junkies and the friends and relatives they drag along with them. Moreover, “Gothic” is a fun and accessible show with enough discourse in the wall texts and object labels to give those of us who want to think more deeply about this immortal subculture food for thought.
“Gothic: Dark Glamour” at the Museum at FIT runs through February 21st
The Museum at FIT
Seventh Avenue at
Take the 1 train to
Museum Hours: Tues-F noon to 8pm and Sat 10am to 5pm
Museum website: www.fitnyc.edu/museum
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