Thematic Essays

By Category

• Recent Additions
• All Thematic Essays
• Artists
• Rulers
• African Art
• Central Africa
• Eastern Africa
• Southern Africa
• Western Africa
• American Art
• Colonial Art
• Nineteenth Century
• Twentieth Century
• Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Art of the Americas
• Asian Art
• China
• Japan
• Korea
• South & Southeast Asia
• Byzantine Art
• Egyptian Art
• European Art
• Renaissance
• Seventeenth & Eighteenth Centuries
• Nineteenth Century
• Twentieth Century
• Greek and Roman Art
• Islamic Art
• Early Period
• Medieval Period
• Later Period
• Medieval Art
• Modern and Contemporary Art
• Oceanic/Pacific Art
• Prehistory

By Geographical Region & Time Period

• 
  Banyan, ca. 1735
  English
  Brown figured silk faille
  Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1981 (1981.208.2)
  
• 
  The Yew Tree Ball (detail), 1745
  Charles Nicolas Cochin II (French, 1715–1790)
  Engraving
  The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1930 (30.22[34/34])
  
• 
  Court gown, 1760s
  French
  Cloth-of-silver brocaded with silver lace trim
  Gift of Fédération de la Soirie, 1950 (50.168.2a,b)
  
• 
  Evening wrap, 1954–55
  Cristobal Balenciaga (Spanish, 1895–1972)
  Pink silk faille
  Gift of Baroness Philippe de Rothschild, 1973 (1973.21.3)
  
• 
  Joseph Sherburne, ca. 1767–70
  John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)
  Oil on canvas; 50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 cm)
  Amelia B. Lazarus Fund, 1923 (23.143)
  
• 
  Robe à la française, third quarter of 18th century
  French
  Ivory cotton printed in multicolored floral motif
  Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1964 (C.I.64.32.3a,b)
  
• 
  At-home dress, ca. 1850
  English
  Chinese aubergine silk damask and velvet
  Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994 (1994.302.1)
  
• 
  Dress (robe à la polonaise), ca. 1780
  French
  White silk de chine with hand-painted multicolored floral sprays
  Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Alan S. Davis Gift, 1976 (1976.146a,b)
  
  Dress (robe à la polonaise), 1780–85
  American
  Yellow silk de chine with hand-painted multicolored floral sprays
  Gift of Heirs of Emily Kearny Rodgers Cowenhoven Gift, 1970 (1970.87a,b)
  
• 
  A Group of Children Playing under the Plum Blossoms in the Snow, 1887
  Hashimoto Chikanobu (Japanese, 1838–1912)
  Woodblock print
  Gift of Lincoln Kirstein, 1959 (JP3341)
  
• 
  Mantle, 1870–75
  French
  White wool serge couched with metallic braid
  Gift of Mrs. Philip K. Rhinelander, 1946 (46.25.4)
  
  Opera cloak, 1850s
  American
  Ivory silk faille embroidered with gold soutache braid
  Gift of Mrs. Josephine Mingle Tennant, 1953 (C.I.53.2)
  
  Dolman, ca. 1870
  American (?)
  While silk poplin and braid
  Gift of Mrs. George W. Heller, 1938 (C.I.38.102)
  
• 
  Dressing gown, ca. 1880
  Japanese for Western market
  Quilted blue silk
  Gift of Katherine Babcock Cavalli, 1970 (1970.83a,b)
  
  Dressing gown, late 1880s
  Japanese for Western market
  Quilted brown silk
  Gift of Theodore Fischer Ellis, 1975 (1975.227.7a,b)
  
• 
  Tea gown, ca. 1891
  French
  Pieced panels of paisley-patterned woven wool shawl
  Purchase, Irene Lewisohn and Alice L. Crowley Bequests, 1985 (1985.39.3)
  
• 
  Dress, 1907
  Jeanne Hallée
  Black silk crepe embroidered with silk floss and ribbon
  Gift of Howard Sturges, in memory of his mother, Mrs. Howard O. Sturges, 1949 (C.I.49.2.5)
  
• 

  Robe à l'anglaise, 1784–87
  French
  White muslin with hammered silver foliate diaper-patterned and red silk thread embroidery
  Isabel Shults Fund, 1991 (1991.204a,b)

• 
  Pagode: Costumes Parisiennes, 1914
  Étienne Drian (French, 1885–1961)
  Hand-colored print
  The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library, Woodman-Thompson Collection (LY62.38.1[20])
  
• 
  Day dress, ca. 1924
  Callot Soeurs (French, active 1895–1937)
  Woven cashmere embroidered with gold thread
  Gift of Julia B. Henry, 1978 (1978.288.7a,b)
  
• 
  Dressing gown, ca. 1930
  Mariano Fortuny (Spanish, 1871–1949)
  Stenciled rose silk
  Gift of Courtlandt Palmer, 1950 (C.I.50.44)
  
• 
  Evening ensemble, ca. 1934
  Jeanne Lanvin (French, 1867–1946)
  Black silk taffeta with metal plaques
  Gift of Miriam W. Coletti, 1993 (1993.423.1a,b)
  
• 
  Evening jacket, 1936–37
  Jeanne Lanvin (French, 1867–1946)
  Silver lamé with black fox trim
  Gift of Mrs. Leon L. Roos, 1966 (C.I.66.58.1)
  
• 
  Evening dress, 1950
  Claire McCardell (American, 1905–1958)
  Red silk damask
  Gift of Irving Drought Harris, in memory of Claire McCardell Harris, 1958 (C.I.58.49.4a,b)
  
• 
  Cocktail dress, ca. 1960
  Madame Grès (Alix Barton) (French, 1903–1993)
  Magenta silk
  Purchase, Gifts from various donors, 1993 (1993.190)
  
• 
  Evening ensemble, spring/summer 1980
  Yves Saint Laurent (French, born Algeria, 1936)
  Gilt embroidered black silk gazar
  Gift of Diana Vreeland, 1984 (1984.607.28a–c)
  

Orientalism is a fabrication of the West. The perilous voyages to Cathay and Edo, and even the narrower crossing to the mysterious harems and itinerant lifestyles of North Africa and the Middle East, gave Europe a secular heaven-on-earth, a paradise undefiled by Western civilization. The early discoverers and the traders sought a land never to inhabit, ever to see as different—a perfect "other," warranting Western supremacy and segregation, and vested with exotic mystery. The allure of the East has been, in part, based on its impenetrability to the West. The inscrutability attributed to the East is, in fact, the West's failure to achieve full comprehension. Orientalism always challenges the Western mind: it is Orientalism that makes Western culture incomplete and that the West uses to see itself as whole.

It is in apparel that the West's need for and assimilation of the East is first evident. Western chinoiserie, japonisme, and turquerie as recurring phenomena of the decorative arts and culture are well known, yet, of the many objects in transaction between East and West, textiles and apparel have been among the most prominent. The power of costume is in its capacity to be absorbed. Nonverbal, the rich textiles and traditions of Eastern dress transcend language barriers. The option in dress afforded by the East is charged with enchantment, with a seeming sweetness and seduction that allows the East's presence to seem innocuous. While never losing the characteristics of its place of origin, clothing has shown itself a readily assimilated object. Eastern ideas of textile, design, construction, and utility have been realized again and again as a positive contribution to the culture of the West.

Thus, the Orientalist objective in Western dress was to cull from the various Easts their spellbinding foreignness for the purpose of rendering Western dress richer and more exotic. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Western wardrobe was vastly enriched by the sumptuous stuffs of the East that brought new pattern and possibility to Western dress, even as it was immediately copied by mills in England and France. In the nineteenth century, the era of universal expositions and colonial exchange brought object categories—such as silks from China, shawls from India, or, after 1854, kimonos from Japan—into the West, and created businesses of copying and adaptation. In addition to the great textiles, ideas of Eastern dress have come to be a part of Western dress, including saris and dhotis from India, kimonos from Japan, caftans and djellabahs from North Africa, and cheongsams from China. The East offers a larger concept in alternative to the Western propensity for tailoring. In giving primacy to the textile, Eastern dress emphasizes the flat terrain of cloth, the looping and wrapping of the garment, and the integrity of the untailored textile. These values, antithetical to postmedieval Western dress, have offered a paradigm of dressing and dressmaking to the West that has been sporadically influential, and notably so in our time. Orientalism is not a picture of the East of the Easts. It represents longing, option, and faraway perfection. It is, like Utopia, a picture everywhere and nowhere, save in the imagination. The Orientalist female was a fabrication of the West, attributing Salambô-like license and nudity to figures who escaped Occidental sanction by their placement in an Orientalist world. Although the taste for chinoiserie was well established, this portrait of Madame de Pompadour wearing a painted-silk dress is unusual for its documentation of the exotic textile.