Video Tour: Charles James at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

It's time for a trip to the Charles James exhibit currently up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through August 10th. Charles James was the great American couturier who famously draped and shaped some of the most beautiful dresses created in the American haute couture. James, who was self-taught, designed in his native London before arriving in New York City in 1940. The designer was an artist whose medium was fabric and whose dresses were masterpieces. He was renowned for his striking color combinations, and his cut and construction, always refining and perfecting his living sculptures. But he was also eccentric and had a hard time running a business. The designer lived and worked in one room in the Chelsea Hotel on West  23rd Street. When he passed away there in 1978 at the age of 73 of pneumonia, he was largely unrecognized and unappreciated. However, his structured dresses with narrow waists and flaring skirts influenced Christian Dior when Dior created the New Look in the late 40's, and so though he is not a well-known household name, Charles James shaped the direction of fashion. 

Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, photograph by Cecil Beaton. 
The exhibition was curated by Harold Koda and Jan Glier Reeder, and is located in two areas at the museum – in the new Anna Wintour Costume Center on the lower level as well as an exhibition gallery on the first floor. The show was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the New York architects we met at a book party at Ann Ziff's fine jewelry store.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro lit the clothes dramatically to highlight their shape. Charles James loved to combine different fabrics like deep, dark velvet and glossy, lustrous satin –

which is here worn by the great Babe Paley herself.

Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
Besides the clothes, there are on display accessories, drawings, videos, and some pithy quotes from Mr. James.

During the press preview for the exhibition, workers were preparing for the big Met Ball which was being held that very night. Here in the Great Hall, a kind of giant deconstructed Charles James ballgown made out of orange roses loomed over the entrance.

I had the pleaure of talking with the brilliant curator Harold Koda at the press preview, and my friend Scott Brasher made a video of the visit. Enjoy this nice long talk with Harold, and learn more about the great American fashion designer Charles James. 

(Fashion) History Repeats Itself

Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress and jewelry designer, in a portrait by painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel.

I've been reading about the recent couture shows in Paris. I have to say, I miss the show of Christian Lacroix, the heavenly French designer who whipped up the most fantastic clothes, and recently went out of business.

John Galliano for Christian Dior presented some very Fifties-ish designs that featured a narrow waist and then billowing silk skirts. When I saw it, it reminded me of the tableau of Charles James dresses which opened the recent "Model as Muse" exhibition at the Museum of Metropolitan Art. Here is my photo from my visit last year:

Charles James was the artistic American couturier who was renowned for his sculptural gowns which combined colors in unexpected ways. The heiress and jewelry designer Millicent Rogers was a great client of his. She is pictured at the top of this post in clouds of Charles James' silk which worked well with her strong, bold, abstract jewelry designs.

Then I read on Hamish Bowles' entertaining blog, The Hamishphere, that, yes, in fact John Galliano was inspired by the museum exhibition for his recent Dior couture collection which included complicated ball gowns in structured shapes – a rich confection of lustrous fabrics and jewel colors.
(photos from Style.com)


This collection goes back to Charles James and it goes back to Christian Dior himself who in the Fifties presented the New Look. After the austerity in France of World War ll, Christian Dior created a popular dress silhouette with a narrow waist and a full skirt featuring yards of fabric which spoke to prosperity and abundance: The New Look.

Now, this is the interesting part. In the Fifties, after closing down her fashion house during the war, Coco Chanel returned to the world of fashion. Chanel of course had already revolutionized fashion earlier in the century. In a reaction against stiff and formal Edwardian clothes, Chanel invented comfortable separate pieces – jackets, pants, tee shirts – which followed the lines of the body and allowed for easy movement.

In the Fifties Chanel was again shocked to find women constrained, this time by the corseted waists and crinolines skirts of Dior's New Look. Her answer to it was a new invention: the Chanel suit. Made out of a lightweight tweed, the suit jacket skimmed the body and was edged with embroidery or pearls; it could easily be slipped off and worn over the shoulders like a cardigan. The slim skirt stopped at the knee, assuring that the modern woman could run to catch a cab and sit down in an office chair.

At the recent couture shows, a day after the Dior show, Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel presented this:

A crisp refreshing tonic, a slice of lemon to cut through the sweetness. Hamish Bowles reports that the edges of the fabrics were unpicked and then woven back together so that there appeared to be no seams. Now that's a modern approach, just as Mademoiselle's new suit was in the Fifties.

The Chanel jacket still skims the body.

Evening dresses seem to float.

Karl Lagerfeld is going for a real weightlessness here. Beautiful and wearable.
As in the past, one collection evokes opulence while the other looks to the future.

In Memoriam: While I was thinking about this post came the news that the amazing English designer Alexander McQueen, age 40, had committed suicide. In 2007 his great friend English stylist Isabella Blow died from suicide. It's so sad. Beyond the tragic loss of life, the world of fashion needs so much these fantastically eccentric and imaginative English talents who really work outside the bounds and take us all beyond the basics.

A Trip to the Met

I had the chance to pop up to the Metropolitan Museum to see the Costume Institute show called "The Model as Muse." Its theme is iconic models of the twentieth century and their roles in projecting and sometimes inspiring the fashion of their times. The exhibit started with the Charles James dresses pictured above, pieces of sculpture in their own right. Their rich, saturated colors and heavy, lustrous fabrics created a delicious tableaux. These dresses reminded me of Millicent Rogers, the Standard oil heiress who wore the most subtly colored Charles James gowns. She was also a very creative jewelry designer and lived in a house in Taos, New Mexico, now a museum out in the desert which TD and I have visited. Charles James was a sad story: though he created the most beautiful clothes, the eccentric designer died penniless in the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street.

In "The Model as Muse" show I was delighted to see one of my favorite fashion photographs of all time. Here is model Lisa Taylor wearing Calvin Klein photographed by Arthur Elgort in Vogue from October, 1976:

I think it captured American fashion so well: simple, clean, healthy, strong. Legendary fashion editor Polly Mellen worked on this shoot, and when I met Polly, we talked about this picture. Polly said, "She is the epitome of the modern woman, deep in thought, not just looking beautiful."

Here is another famous, iconic fashion photo in the show, also Lisa Taylor, also wearing Calvin Klein, this time shot by Helmut Newton for Vogue, May 1975. Polly worked on this shoot too: Polly really is one of the greats, isn't she? Someone should do a show on her.

This picture expressed the then new feminism movement; the woman in a sheer dress with her legs spread was clearly ogling the man passing by. Again, the picture is simple, strong, chic, just like the clothes. And Lisa Taylor was a knockout, the perfect embodiment of American beauty.

After that I went up to the Sculpture Roof Garden where currently installed is this crazy stainless steel sculpture called Maelstrom by Roxy Paine.

It's meant to make the viewer feel as if he is "immersed in the midst of a catalysmic force of nature" but honestly I was just afraid I was going to trip.

Or poke an eye out.

Then I went to the New American Wing. They cleaned things up and simplified there, taking out a gift shop and adding a little cafe; it would be a nice place to eat lunch.

On the way home I saw this guy on the subway; I think he was a model. Slim white shirt, narrow dark denim jeans, brown suede wing-tip tie-ups, cotton canvas bag with leather trim, wooden skate board. Very cool. Don't you love New York?