Harold Koda
The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
October 2003
History, whether manifested as embracing revival or smug repudiation, is especially evident in fashion. Although components of Hellenic attire have appeared throughout Western fashion’s 600-year history, it is only from the 1790s to the 1810s that classicized forms are embraced as the prevailing mode. For most of the period that followed, classical motifs and allusions were essentially superficial. Not until the first decade of the twentieth century, with the movement to an uncorseted body, did a classical sensibility return to fashion with any pronounced significance.
Hellenic dress, with its diversity of draped effects based on reductive, orthogonal components, established an apt paradigm for designers. While the modernists gravitated toward the elegant economy of the construction of dress provided by antique models, postmodernists preferred to cite classical iconography more explicitly. That such contradictory movements incorporated the concepts and imagery of classical dress suggests the protean nature of the style.
In the face of the fashion system’s cycle of novelty and obsolescence, the classical mode, with its evocation of an enduring and immutable ideal, is somewhat of a paradox. Ancient Hellenic attire continues to inspire designers two-and-a-half millennia later, testimony to the universal aspiration to transform woman into goddess through dress.
Citation
Koda, Harold. “Classicism in Modern Dress.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/god1/hd_god1.htm (October 2003)
Further Reading
Koda, Harold. Goddess: The Classical Mode. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003. See on MetPublications
Additional Essays by Harold Koda
- Koda, Harold. “Dress Rehearsal: The Origins of the Costume Institute.” (October 2004)
- Koda, Harold. “Classical Art and Modern Dress.” (October 2003)
- Koda, Harold. “Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress.” (October 2004)
- Koda, Harold. “The Chiton, Peplos, and Himation in Modern Dress.” (October 2003)
- Koda, Harold. “The Greek Key and Divine Attributes in Modern Dress.” (October 2003)
- Koda, Harold. “Paul Poiret (1879–1944).” (September 2008)
- Koda, Harold. “Christian Dior (1905–1957).” (October 2004)
- Koda, Harold. “Contemporary Deconstructions of Classical Dress.” (October 2003)
- Koda, Harold. “Haute Couture.” (October 2004)
- Koda, Harold. “The Chopine.” (October 2002)
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