The Alice in Wonderland section, before its painted rabbit hole.
Details
January 15 – April 16, 2016
The Museum at FIT
Special Exhibitions Gallery
New York, NY
Links & Downloads
Fairy Tale Fashion was a unique and imaginative exhibition that examined fairy tales through the lens of high fashion. In versions of numerous fairy tales by authors such as Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, it is evident that dress was often used to symbolize a character’s transformation, vanity, power, or privilege. The importance of Cinderella’s glass slippers is widely known, for example, yet these shoes represent only a fraction of the many references to clothing in fairy tales.
Organized by associate curator Colleen Hill, Fairy Tale Fashion featured more than eighty objects placed within dramatic, fantasy-like settings designed by architect Kim Ackert. Since fairy tales are not often set in a specific time period, Fairy Tale Fashion included garments and accessories dating from the eighteenth century to the present. There was a particular emphasis on extraordinary twenty-first-century fashions by designers such as Thom Browne, Dolce and Gabbana, Tom Ford, Giles, Mary Katrantzou, Marchesa, Alexander McQueen, Rick Owens, Prada, Rodarte, and Walter Van Beirendonck, among others.
On making it
It is certainly not a straightforward fashion history show. One reviewer called my approach to object selection ‘intuitive,’ which seems exactly right. I eventually came to realize that what I was doing — selecting objects that I thought represented a moment in the stories based on very little description or detail — was not unlike what the many illustrators of the tales have done over time.
Colleen Hill
From an interview with Whitney Millar, “Fairy Tale Fashion at the Museum at FIT,” Nuvo, March 8, 2016.
More views
Six red cloaks, and the wolf.
Playing cards on springs, and card epaulettes.
The red cloak, hood ruffled in silk.
Hideki Seo’s heart-shaped gown, beside the Hatter.
Photo and caption to come.
Photo and caption to come.
Photo and caption to come.
Press
“Stephen Jones, the British hat designer, created a tweed-covered wire bear head as a charming topper for a raw-edged Thom Browne suit from the fall 2014 men’s wear collection, representing the bear prince from ‘Rose Red and Snow White.’”
Laren Stover, “Fashion Goes Into the Woods” · March 18, 2016
Quote to come.
Nancy MacDonell, “Are Our First Ideas of Fashion Rooted in Fairy Tales? A New Exhibit Says Yes” · January 14, 2016
“The heart of the exhibition . . . is the main gallery space, where fashion interpretations of fourteen fairy tales are staged within four settings: a forest, a castle, the sea and parallel worlds.”
Timothy Mitchell, “This Stylish Exhibit Shows You Really Can Dress like a Princess” · January 9, 2016