From the Metropolitan Museum’s collection: Miuccia Prada, Ensemble, fall/winter 2007-8, Gift of Prada
In a previous post, I fretted that the Metropolitan Museum’s outsized success with its theatrically over-the-top Alexander McQueen installation (which, like everyone else, I greatly admired) might “considerably up the ante for sound, animation and atmospherics” in future shows at the Met and elsewhere. I feared that flashy bells-and-whistles might upstage the objects themselves and their scholarly interpretation.
One thing seems certain: “McQueen” has considerably upped the ante for Met’s Costume Institute, which today issued a press release announcing its next extravaganza—“Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion,” May 10-Aug. 19. (Hasn’t Schiaparelli recently been done?)
According to the Met’s announcement of Elsa/Miuccia:
Film director, screenwriter, and producer Baz Luhrmann will be the
exhibition’s creative consultant, working with film production designer
Nathan Crowley, who will serve as production designer.
An Australian film director for Italian designers? Where’s Fellini when we really need him?
The use of theatrical special effects that worked well for McQueen could prove gimmicky and obtrusive for these two women from different eras, who had a surrealistic vibe in common. (Schiaparelli died in 1973; Prada is contemporary.)
When exhibition design morphs into “production design,” we’re approaching cart-driving-the-horse territory, were quiet garments may be upstaged by flashy trappings.
From the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 2003-4 Schiaparelli show: Left, Afternoon Dress, winter 1930-31, black wool and silk. Philadelphia Museum; Right, Coat, winter 1930-31, black wool, Philadelphia Museum