John F. Kennedy – Mary Jane Denzer

Women’s day: The Met’s ‘Women Dressing Women’ celebrates women designers, sung and unsung

Captions: Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, poised to toss her bouquet after her wedding to then-Sen. John F. Kennedy on Sept. 12, 1953, wears a dress created by Ann Lowe, the first African American designer of note. *Photograph by Tom Frissell. Courtesy the Library of Congress Photographs and Prints Division.*

When we think of great designers of couture for women, do we at first think of women designers?

Yes, we can rattle off names – Sarah Burton, who recently left the House of Alexander McQueen, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel; Carolina Herrera; Jeanne Lanvin, Monique Lluillier, Donna Karan, Jenny Packham, Miuccia Prada, Elsa Schiaperelli, Vera Wang, Vivienne Westwood, to name a few. But don’t even more men designers come to mind? It doesn’t help that Burton was replaced by a man, Sean McGirr, creating an all-male leadership at Kering – the French luxury conglomerate, number two in the fashion world, that owns Alexander McQueen. It’s equally noteworthy that men were recently named to the top jobs at Moschino, Rochas and Tod’s.

“Delphos” gown, Adèle Henriette Elisabeth Nigrin Fortuny (French, 1877–1965) and Mariano Fortuny (Spanish, 1871–1949) for Fortuny (Italian, founded 1906), circa 1932. Gift of Robert Rubin, in memory of Doris Rubin, 2011. *Photograph by Anna-Marie Kellen. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.*

And yet there are not only great women designers but scores who are unsung. No longer: Through March 3, The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents “Women Dressing Women,” featuring 80 pieces from its collection by more than 70 makers. They include a black cocktail dress with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline by Jasmin Sae of Customiety, who designs for women with achondroplasia, a condition that inhibits bone growth. (Diversity and inclusion is also served by plus-size mannequins and one in a wheelchair.)

In considering these works – selected by Mellissa Huber, the Costume Institute’s associate curator, and guest curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven for a show that was supposed to coincide with the centennial of U.S. women’s suffrage in the Covid year of 2020 – two words immediately come to our mind, “goddess” and “bold.”

Evening dress, Madeleine Maltezos (French, 1900–1985) and Suzie Carpentier (French) for Mad Carpentier (French, 1939–1957), late 1940s. Gift of Eleanora Eaton Brooks, 1975. *Photograph by Anna-Marie Kellen. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.*

The goddess begins really where the exhibit ends, “highlighting stories of absence or omission through the presentation of objects by designers whose work has only recently begun to receive widespread credit and recognition,” according to the press materials. These include the stories of Ann Lowe, the first African American to become a designer of note, who created Jacqueline Lee Bouvier’s ivory silk taffeta wedding dress for her marriage to then-Sen. John F. Kennedy on Sept. 12 1953; and Adèle Henriette Elizabeth Nigrin Fortuny, who was instrumental in the design of the silk, pleated “Delphos” gown, first introduced in 1909 after the chiton sported by “The Charioteer of Delphi,” an ancient Greek sculpture. (The chiton was worn by men and women alike.)

The 20^th-century’s dawn saw a fascination with the fluidity of ancient Greek design. (Think dancer-choreographer Isadora Duncan.) But that flowing goddess look is echoed not only in a 1932 belted, cap-sleeved Fortuny incarnation but in gowns by Marcelle Chaumont, Claire McCardell, Marcelle Chapsal, Mad Carpentier and NoSesso.

Ensemble, Maria Grazia Chiuri (Italian, born 1964) and Grace Wales Bonner (British, born 1992) for House of Dior (French, founded 1947), cruise 2020, edition 2022. Gift of Christian Dior Couture, 2023. *Photograph by Anna-Marie Kellen. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art*

These watery designs are the yin to the bold, angular creations that vie for your attention as well. The robe de style by Jeanne Lanvin, a sleeveless cocktail dress with a shimmering, ballet-slipper pattern cascading down the plunging neckline, belt and front of the skirt. A red and plaid dolman-sleeved, fringed coat by Bonnie Cashin. A long red T-shirt by Katharine Hammett that exhorts you to “Stay Alive in 1985.” A fitted black jacket and bell-shaped skirt in bands of floral, red, brown and black patterns by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Grace Wales Bonner for Dior’s cruise-wear that echoes the “New Look” Christian Dior created at the end of World War II to celebrate the female silhouette and the return to romance. Jamie Okuma’s architectural, Art Deco-style “Parfleche Dress,” a black and tan fantasy. And Marine Serra’s fitted, scaly patchwork gown with extra-long sleeves.

All of these proclaim designers who have made a statement in creating for women who are unafraid to do the same.

Take note of their names. The Met has curated a show to make sure you don’t forget them.

Tags: “Women Dressing Women,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, Ann Lowe, John F. Kennedy, Sarah Burton, Alexander McQueen, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel; Carolina Herrera; Monique Lluillier, Donna Karan, Jenny Peckham, Miuccia Prada, Vera Wang, Vivienne Westwood, Delphos gown, Marine Serra, Jamie Okuma, the “New Look,” Christian Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Grace Wales Bonner, Jeanne Lanvin, Bonnie Cashin, Marcelle Chaumont, Claire McCardell, Marcelle Chapsal, Mad Carpentier, NoSesso, “The Charioteer of Delphi,” Adèle Henriette Elizabeth Nigrin Fortuny, Elsa Schiaparelli, Kering, Mellisa Huber, Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Sean McGirr, Rochas, Tod’s, Moschino

Fashion “In America”

Tom Ford reimagines the battle between American ready-to-wear designers and French couturiers that took place in Versailles in 1973 as a “Matrix”-flying encounter in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Vanderlyn Panorama Room as the centerpiece of The Costume Institute’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” (through Sept. 5).

The second part of The Met Costume Institute’s two-part exhibit on American fashion history is more American fashion than it is history.

The good news is that “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” (through Sept. 5) is better than part one, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.” The bad news is that its staging often sabotages its flights of inspired fancy. Forget designers and directors. The show could’ve used a choreographer and a traffic cop.

“Lexicon” gave us vitrines of clothing with words that matched the ensembles – or not – crammed into The Costume Institute in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s lower level next to the Egyptian Wing. “Anthology” opens things up a bit, staging vignettes by edgy movie directors featuring mannequins clothed in various styles in The Met’s American Wing period rooms. The Costume Institute has done this brilliantly in the past with French fashion in European period rooms and a Vatican-inspired show that took us from The Met’s medieval galleries in the main museum on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to The Cloisters, its medieval wing in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan.

Here come the brides: A room of bridal fashions contains a photograph of Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (far left) in the ivory, portrait-neckline gown designed by Ann Lowe, one of the unsung Black designers highlighted in the show.

The problem with the current exhibit is that the rooms are generally too small to accommodate the fashion faithful thronging the show. (We saw it at a members’ preview that was already uncomfortable, given the museum’s masking and social distancing requirements.) The low lighting necessary for the preservation of the textiles in these rooms also makes it difficult to read the accompanying text. Unless you are intimately acquainted with film and fashion history, you’re going to give up in frustration.

Which is a shame, because “Anthology” has much to offer if you have the time and patience. Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao sets Claire McCardell sportswear in the light-dappled Shaker Retiring Room (Mount Lebanon, New York, 1835) in a scene that will evoke everything from Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” to Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale.” An operatic, Empire-style cocktail party turns chaotic as photographer-director Autumn de Wilde meets Jane Austen. Sofia Coppola goes all Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw” with Gilded Age-clad mannequins in the shadowy McKim Mead and White Stair Hall (Buffalo, New York, 1882-84). (Just forget about reading any of the text here. It’s not going to happen.)

Martin Scorsese pays tribute to mid-20th century film noir with this 1950s’ cocktail party in the Frank Lloyd Wright Room.

In the show’s centerpiece, Tom Ford, designer and director, reimagines the battle between American ready-to-wear designers and French couturiers that took place in Versailles in 1973 as a “Matrix”-flying encounter, with swords brandished and clothing swirling in the Vanderlyn Panorama Room, a stately 360-degree view of Louis XIV’s pleasure palace. It’s a tour de force but again unless you have a deep knowledge of fashion, it’s going to be hard to match the text beneath the panorama with the soaring, El Greco-like apotheosis of outfits.

Nor do the show’s organizers necessarily help themselves with the mix of periods. A room of businesslike 1940s fashions is inextricably linked with music of the freewheeling 1920s. A fabulous strapless, floral-brocade cocktail dress placed in the Rococo Revival Parlor (Astoria, Queens, circa 1850) so confused one viewer that his wife had to explain five times that though the dress was from the 1960s, the room was mid-19^th century. (He still didn’t get it.)

Chloé Zhao captures the “Simple Gifts” of the Shakers by setting Claire McCardell sportswear in the light-dappled Shaker Retiring Room, although viewers nowadays will be forgiven if it evokes Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale” as much as Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring.”

Along the way, the exhibit considers the unsung role that Black designers, tailors and seamstresses played in American fashion. There’s the well-known striped dress that first lady Mary Todd Lincoln wore with a Tiffany seed-pearl suite her indulgent husband, President Abraham Lincoln, gave her. The dress was presumably created by former slave Elizabeth Keckly, who stood in relationship to the first lady much as Angela Kelly stands in relationship to Queen Elizabeth II today – dressmaker turned confidante. (Though Mary Todd Lincoln appears stout in photographs, particularly standing next to her gangly husband, the exquisite, wasp-waisted day dress looks like it could be worn only by a child today.)

You wonder if the extraordinary Keckly, who would go on to become a civil rights activist, inspired Ann Lowe, the Black designer who created Jacqueline Lee Bouvier’s ivory, portrait- neckline gown for her Sept. 12, 1953 marriage to then-Sen. John F. Kennedy. (That moment is recalled in a photograph in a room about famous bridal gowns.)

The patient will be rewarded with such golden nuggets. The impatient will find themselves straining to see Martin Scorsese’s Hitchcockian homage in the Frank Lloyd Wright Room (Wayzata. Minnesota, 1912-14), complete with 1950s gowns, and recognize a familiar New York experience – eager to be part of a scene if f only they could get into it.

Tags: The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” Chloé Zhao, Claire McCardell, Tom Ford, Versailles, The American Wing, Elizabeth Keckly, Mary Todd Lincoln, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, Ann Lowe, Martin Scorsese, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry James, Jane Austen, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Black designers, McKim Mead and White, Sofia Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock

Still queen of style

JBKJFKMalraux — All eyes are on Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy as she stuns in this shimmering pink Oleg Cassini at a 1962 White House dinner with the French minister of culture, André Malraux (left) and her husband, President John F. Kennedy (right). Courtesy the White House.

Sheaths and shifts. Ropes of pearls. Pillbox hats atop a brunet bouffant. Large, dark glasses and and long, white gloves.

Such was the power of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’ wardrobe that the mere mention of a few articles of clothing or accessories is enough to conjure a woman who transformed American culture in part by transforming American fashion. Indeed, the book cover for Steven Rowley’s new novel, “The Editor,” features only the famed oversize sunglasses on a desk with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop while the bubblegum pink cover of Eve Pollard’s novel “Jack’s Widow” depicts the bouffant hairdo, a strand of pearls and white gloves. The mind fills in the rest.

This is a big year for Jackie and her admirers. July 28 marks the 90th anniversary of her birth. (The 25th anniversary of her death was commemorated May 19.) This year is also the 20th anniversary of the death of her son, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, the former Greenwich resident Carolyn Bessette; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard July 16.

“Age cannot wither her,” Shakespeare wrote of his Cleopatra, “nor custom stale her infinite variety.” The same could be said of Jackie, who continues to influence the influencers. Long before Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge wowed the Canadians with a red outfit that paid tribute to the scarlet of their flag and the Royal Mounties, Jackie donned a nubby red suit with a high collar, three-quarter sleeves and a matching pillbox hat for a 1961 visit that electrified Ottawa. The Jackie effect – the subject of a commemorative issue by People magazine – can be seen in Kate’s double-breasted coats and matching hats; her sister-in-law Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s white cape dress; first lady Melania Trump’s wide-belted outfits; Amal Clooney’s black T and white jeans; and Jennifer Lopez’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s goddess gowns.

But few today remember that Jackie wasn’t always a style icon. A bookish equestrian whose introverted nature gave her a certain mystique as it shielded her from a prying public, a controlling mother, Janet Lee Auchincloss, and the Bouviers’ lack of wealth relative to her Auchincloss’ step-family, the coltish young Jackie was more apt to adapt the gamin look of a 1950s Audrey Hepburn than develop one of her own. It was her younger sister Lee, considered the more traditional beauty, who was the fashion and design trendsetter as well as a lover of the ancient Greeks (and one ancient Greek in particular, Aristotle Onassis) and the Italian Renaissance.

But if Lee was the more adventurous sister, Jackie had more stick-to-itiveness. With Oleg Cassini, the Paris-born couture and film costume designer, curating a wardrobe designed to read across the world stage, Kenneth devising a longer, bouffant hairdo to frame her wide-set bone structure and Halston creating pillbox hats that would just crown her large head, Jackie picked up the ball and ran with it. In both fashion and interior design, she indulged the love of France that was inspired both by her Bouvier blood and her junior year in Paris – “the happiest of my life,” she later recalled. It enabled her to mix French couture (Balenciaga, Dior, Givenchy) with domestic ensembles and to bring the White House into the present by looking to its refined Federal (early 19th century) past, which corresponded to the neoclassical period in France.

But interior design and fashion were always means to an end for Jackie, who saw them in service of creating a standard of excellence for the nation and an atmosphere of comfort for her husband, President John F. Kennedy, and their children, her number one priority.

With her children grown, she focused on historic preservation, championing Grand Central Terminal, and, as an editor encouraging a host of memoirists from Michael Jackson to Martha Graham.

Jackie remains the queen of style in part because she was always about so much more than that.