Before there were stylists and “Sex and the City,” celebrity designers and designing celebrities, there was a clothing maker and a client.
So begins American Woman, the new fashion exhibit opening Wednesday at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that celebrates the story of us, from 1890 to 1940.
In the 1890s, the dynamic was not so different. There was a red carpet of sorts, and it was called the “400,” the New York society hot list presided over by Mrs. Astor. And its star was the Heiress, shopping for a British aristocrat husband, clad in gowns by the likes of Charles Frederick Worth, the Tom Ford of his day.
“It’s an amazing show because it truly shows the history of America,” says Patrick Robinson, executive vice president of global design for Gap, the exhibit sponsor.
“You walk through and you start realizing that women changed their wardrobe to protest something, to free themselves or to express themselves to the outside world.”
So at the turn of the century, the Gibson Girl ditched confining frippery to dress for cycling and swimming. In the 1910s, the Suffragist and Patriot went military to fight for her rights. The Bohemian exercised her right to jump into the counterculture — and the Flapper just wanted to have fun. The Screen Siren marked the first time the world wanted to dress American style, exported abroad through movies.
We’ve interpreted scenes from the exhibit (metmuseum.org) into modern-day looks.