Exhibition dates: May 3 – September 4, 2006
Exhibition location: The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries
Press preview: Monday, May 1, 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion, opening on May 3, 2006, will present a wide range of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum's English Period Rooms – The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries. A pendant to the acclaimed 2004 Costume Institute exhibition Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century, AngloMania will examine ideals, stereotypes, and representations of Englishness by juxtaposing historical costume with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions.
The exhibition and its accompanying book are made possible by Burberry.
Additional support has been provided by Condé Nast.
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Benefit Gala will take place on Monday, May 1, 2006. Rose Marie Bravo, Chief Executive of Burberry, and The Duke of Devonshire will serve as Honorary Chairs of the Gala. Co-Chairs will be Christopher Bailey, Creative Director of Burberry, actress Sienna Miller, and Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue.
Anglomania, the craze for all things English, gripped Europe during the mid-to-late 18th century. As perceived by Anglophiles such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, England was a land of reason, freedom, and tolerance, a land where the Enlightenment found its greatest expression. But what began as an intellectual phenomenon became and has remained a matter of style. Through the lens of fashion, AngloMania examines aspects of English culture – such as class, sport, royalty, eccentricity, the English gentleman, and the English country garden – that have fuelled the European and American imagination.
To reveal a conceptual continuum of the "English imaginary," costumes from the 18th and 19th centuries will be placed alongside the work of designers such as Richard Anderson, Christopher Bailey, Manolo Blahnik, Carlo Brandelli, Ozwald Boateng, Hussein Chalayan, Simon Costin, John Galliano, Richard James, Stephen Jones, Shaun Leane, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Paul Smith, Philip Treacy, and Vivienne Westwood. As with Dangerous Liaisons, the clothing will be styled as a series of thematic vignettes that reflect the history, function, and decoration of the Museum's English Period Rooms.
The Kirtlington Park Room from Oxfordshire (ca. 1748) will take as its theme "The English Garden." Originally situated in a bucolic landscape designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown, the room's exuberant plasterwork of fruit and flowers – an extension of Brown's cultivated landscape – will be mirrored in a series of 18th-century dresses made of silks produced by Spitalfields. Ranging from the bizarre patterns of the early 1700s to the rococo patterns of the 1750s, they reveal a range of exotic flowers that will be given three-dimensional form through a group of "orchid" hats by Philip Treacy. Anchoring the room will be a dress by Hussein Chalayan made from hundreds of nylon rosettes clipped to resemble topiary.
Class and domestic service will be the theme of the Cassiobury Park Staircase from Hertfordshire (ca. 1677–80), which will contrast an 1880s court gown with tattered, ragged dresses by Hussein Chalayan. The court gown was worn to the court of Queen Victoria and comprises an elaborate eleven-foot train with floral motifs that reflect the foliate carving of the staircase. Recalling the 18th- and 19th-century practice of servants wearing their employers' hand-me-downs, Chalayan's dresses are made up of several layers of second-hand garments and elements from his own repertoire, such as buried and distressed garments.
One of the most remarkable pieces of furniture in the Museum's English Period Rooms is a state bed from Hampton Court in Herefordshire (ca. 1698). In their bloated grandeur, state beds were potent symbols of status and upon the death of a senior family member were used to stage a wake. Reflecting this function, the vignette entitled "The Deathbed" will examine symbols of death and decay. Queen Victoria's "widow's weeds" will be shown alongside a dress by Alexander McQueen with a memento mori in the form of an eerie skeleton corset by the jeweler Shaun Leane.
The themes of empire and monarchy will be explored in the Elizabethan Room (ca. 1595–1600) through the work of Vivienne Westwood. One dress is based on a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I from Hardwick Hall. Revealing a range of aquatic motifs, it references the queen's mercantile interests, such as the Company of Spanish Merchants, which included among its members William Crowe, the original owner of the Elizabethan Room. A more ironic reading of the theatre of royal portraiture will be seen in an ensemble from Westwood's "Harris Tweed" collection of 1987, an homage to Queen Elizabeth II. Comprising a tweed crown, fake ermine cape, velvet corset, velvet "mini-crini," and laced "Rocking Horse" shoes, it unites ideals of royalty and femininity in a playful commentary on the spectacle of nationhood.
While Anglomania was sweeping through France in the mid-to-late 18th century, England was in the grips of Francomania, a theme that will inform the vignette staged in the Croome Court Room from Worcestershire (ca. 1771). Originally owned by George William, sixth earl of Coventry – whose love of all things French can be seen in the room's tapestries – it showcases a magnificent ball gown by John Galliano for Christian Dior. Like Charles Frederick Worth, whose work will also be displayed in the exhibition, Galliano is an avid Francophile who combines aspects from the history of French fashion with those from the history of the House of Dior.
The Lansdowne Room (ca. 1766–69) pitches the gentleman against punks and dandies as an expression of England's impulse toward sartorial rebellion. In the exhibition, bespoke suits by Savile Row tailors such as Huntsman, Henry Poole & Co., and Anderson and Sheppard will be placed alongside bondage suits by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, whose subversive designs of the 1970s retain their power to shock even today. Punk introduced the language of postmodernism, as dandyism had introduced the language of modernism. With its eclectic mixing of styles from different periods and cultures, Punk broke down all rules of dressing, paving the way for the poetical, historical, and theatrical designs included in AngloMania.
Postmodernism is the thread that weaves through the exhibition. It is celebrated in the last scene entitled "The Hunt Ball," the postscript to another vignette entitled "The Hunt." Through the work of Manolo Blahnik, John Galliano, Stephen Jones, Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, Vivienne Westwood, and Christopher Bailey for Burberry, it will explore the sardonic and romantic historicism that has come to define British fashion over the past 30 years. Eccentricity and theatricality
have long been associated with England, and the designs in "The Hunt Ball" will elucidate the origins of these associations.
AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion is a collaboration between The Costume Institute and The Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is organized by Andrew Bolton, Associate Curator, with the support of Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, both of The Costume Institute. Additional support has been given by Ian Wardropper, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman, and Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide, Curator, both of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Patrick Kinmonth and Antonio Monfreda are Creative Consultants for the exhibition. Faces and wigs are designed and styled by Julien d'Ys and Tamaris.
The accompanying book AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in fall 2006. With an introduction by the social critic Ian Buruma, it will be distributed by Yale University Press.
The exhibition will also be featured on the Museum's Web site (www.metmuseum.org).
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April 26, 2006
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