“My salvation was stumbling into fashion,” says fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, resurrected from the grave (in the guise of actress Judy Davis) in the introductory gallery of the Metropolitan Museum’s Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations (May 10-Aug. 19).
You too may “stumble into fashion,” if, like me and so many people I witnessed at this morning’s press preview, you are flummoxed by the confusing navigation through too-narrow passageways and house-of-mirrors dead ends in this astonishingly wrong-footed installation.
This could be the most dangerous museum show in recent memory. People who had flunked their bone-density tests were unlikely to have ventured onto the vertiginous Carsten Höller slide at the New Museum a few months ago. But women of a certain age will surely come to see Schiaparelli (if not Prada).
Here comes one now. The installation is actually quite dark, adding to the drama and danger. I lightened the video so you can see our hapless visitor, who, as you will hear, asked me whether anyone had crashed yet:
I found myself almost walking into glass (not once but twice), causing a young, burly television cameraman to assure me: “Don’t worry. I almost did that too.”
Below you can see part of the problem. The white-square stickers that are supposed to alert you that you’re confronting a piece of glass, not a passageway, are considerably below eye height. You are unlikely to see them (but below, you can see me…and the too-low square stickers):
Nathan Crowley, whose title is “production designer,” is credited with this disaster-waiting-to-happen…perhaps at tonight’s gala, where some visitors may arrive somewhat more tipsy than the mostly sober press with whom I attended the preview.
The Schiaparelli comment that I quoted at the top of this post is from a series of ingenious “Impossible Conversations” between her and the chief beneficiary of this show, the very much alive and active designer, Miuccia Prada. Created by noted film director Baz Luhrmann, these contantly repeating film clips are fascinating (both for Davis’ animated acting and Prada’s ability to turn in a credible performance of her own) but they noisily distract and detract from one’s concentration on the clothes. (You can view all the conversations on the Met’s website, here.)
For me, not only the logistics but also the concept didn’t work. Although the show’s catalogue argues otherwise, I don’t see a good case made for the affinities between the clothes created by these two designers—not in the juxtapositions of garments nor in the label texts. Here’s one of the most disconcerting juxtapositions. (I’ll let you guess, between the shorts in front and the jacket behind, whose is whose:)
Individual cases sometimes demonstrate distant echoes in the formal concerns or types of materials used. We are repeatedly told that these women were and are creative forces with strong ideas and a flair for shaking things up. That description, however, could be applied to almost any successful fashion designer.
Although this is supposed to be a dialogue of equals, you can’t help but see the juxtapositions as a competition, which that (to my mind) Schiaparelli easily wins. As we learned today from comments by Met curator Harold Koda, the original idea was to do a show of Schiaparelli, especially because the museum had received an important trove of her work in the 2008 transfer of the Brooklyn Museum’s costume collection. But since the Philadelphia Museum had already done a definitive Schiaparelli retrospective, another angle was needed. Enter Prada.
This being an art museum, I would have liked to have seen more made of the close connection between “Schiap” and Dali (including at least one painting). We did get to see the Dali-inspired “Tear” Dress, 1938, on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (The Met’s wags affixed a Dali mustache to the head of the mannequin.)
Whatever you do, be sure to remember to walk slowly and stay sober. Good luck to those who will tread the red carpet at tonight’s gala (which, for the first time, you can view live and at a safe distance, beginning at 6:30 on the Met’s website).
I only hope that museum’s liability insurance is up to date (or that guards as stationed at all the danger points).