Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Takes on clothing: Japan, Sculpture; Eunice Johnson, inspiring African American women

On this trip east I saw two wonderful shows about clothing. 
The first was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rei Kawakubo is the designer behind the brand Comme Les Garcons.   

This show is entirely about clothing as sculpture. All the pieces are mounted on manikins & none are intended for wear. That is what makes this show such a delight -- the flights of pure imagination.

This was the first piece I saw. I love the course steel wool wig & brown paper dress!
It was all so much fun.


 

The playfulness, the ingenuity, the irreverence.....

 


When I went to DC I went to the new Textile Museum. My friend Laurie & I saw some of the dress collection of Eunice Johnson. She was the wife of John Johnson who published Ebony & Jet magazines. Eunice Johnson created the Fashion Fair that toured African American communities in large cities for several decades starting in the sixties. She brought haute couture to women in those communities as a way of saying: you may also dress with flair & style & class. Women took it to heart, encouraged by the African American models who walked the talk. 
Eunice is on the right.



  

                                                                   Oh my!!
I want to end with a painting by a man who is relatively unknown. He was a contemporary of all the Parisians involved in early impressionism.
What caught me about this woman was what I saw as such a contemporary posture.
That's it for now.



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