Connections/White

My name's Andrew Bolton and I'm a curator of fashion and costume at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I chose white primarily because of its contradictions.

It can represent youth

or it can represent age.

Is it audacious?

Is white bold?

Is it bashful?

Is it abstemious?

Is it ostentatious? I love how fashion is accessible and it's democratic and I always see it as being a way into art. I think when it comes to any paintings I always see

the clothes first and foremost, more than anything else, even when it comes to pure

abstraction, I look at art and I see fashion or frocks. It's just a way into art.

But, when it comes to painting, whenever I think about white I think about Sargent. Particularly his Wyndham Sisters the 1899 painting

where all the sisters are wearing these sort of frothy white gowns. And apparently Sargent played a very critical role in choosing the clothes for his sitters. He really understood the power of fashion to communicate messages.

Here's a wedding dress by Yohji Yamamoto. It's actually a toile that's made up as a finished garment. Toiles are

samples, which are made in muslin from which the final pattern for a garment is taken. What Yohji's done, is made visible all the details of creating a toile.

So he's made visible the stitches that establish the grain lines under the cloth, the spiraling of the fabric, which indicates the draper's process. And he's also indicated the control of fullness through the use of tucks and darts which we see at the front of the dress.

I love it because it looks like it's a dress poised near the point of resolution or completion. I think it projects the sort of spontaneity, the sort of energetic spontaneity of a sketch, more like a schematic of an idea rather than a conclusive work.

And another dress I've looked at is made by Alexander McQueen. And it's from his Spring 2003 collection. And the premise of the collection was of a shipwreck at sea.

And it's comprised of a fitted boned corset to which is attached a sort of voluminous skirt which is comprised of hundreds

and hundreds of graduated layers of ivory organza.

All the layers of the silk have been left with like an unfinished raw edge and it always reminds me of a mille feuille sort of pastry. And

I love the way the silk chiffon sort of extends at the shoulders and it sort of reminds me of kelp. And also the way McQueen's draped the silk chiffon over the bodice reminds me of classical statues.

Like this one which actually shows a figure dressed in a chiton and himation. And these clothes would originally have been brightly colored. But whenever fashion undergoes a classical revival, white is forefronted.

Like this one by Madame Grès which looks like a caryatid. Grès always ended her fashion shows with pleated white silk jersey gowns. And this one has

like a himation-like draped swing to it, and the swag is actually a continuous and unbroken panel of fabric

and it sort of suggests a natural body, but in actual fact it has a built-in corset.

Oh, it's actually The First Communion! I read this as a bride. But, hmm, yeah, but I read this as a bride! And as a result of reading it as a bride, I thought it had this like haunting quality to it. And it also reminded me

of Miss Havisham. You know, she sort of seems old and young at the same time. And again it sort of captures that sort of contradictory nature of white, you know white is both demure but it's also attention-grabbing.

I wanted to end with another wedding dress. It's all about distortion. It's not about the natural body at all. It's really about being against nature.

And it reveals the sort of fashionable silhouette of the 1890s. It has enormous gigot sleeves and a very tight corseted waist. And I think what I love about it being

in white is it just underscores its sort of extravagant silhouette. Plain colors always enhance the sort of visual impact of garments. So, I love the sort of like contradictory nature of white and

how one views it or sees it in both painting and fashion.