Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress

Dress The Journal of the Costume Society of America ISSN: 0361-2112 (Print) 2042-1729 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ydre20 Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress Ingrid Mida To cite this article: Ingrid Mida (2015) Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress, Dress, 41:1, 37-51, DOI: 10.1179/0361211215Z.00000000038 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1179/0361211215z.00000000038 Published online: 21 May 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 902 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=ydre20

37 Research Report Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress Ingrid Mida Ingrid Mida is the Fashion Research Collection Co-ordinator at Ryerson University and a Ph.D. student in art history at York University in Toronto. Her research focuses on artistic interventions in displays of fashion. She is a recipient of the Janet Arnold Fund award from the Society of Antiquaries of London and the lead author of the book The Dress Detective: A Practical Guide to Object-based Research in Fashion being published in fall 2015 by Bloomsbury Academic. Clothing takes form and is animated by the body. Within the context of a museum, present-day practice standards limit the options for displays of dress artifacts to static dress forms and mannequins. This was not always the case, and at one time museums routinely used live models for runway presentations and for photography of dress artifacts. This paper considers the history of the use of live models in the display of dress artifacts in museums and examines novel curatorial strategies employed to create the illusion of an animated body in some recent notable museum exhibitions of fashion. Keywords dress artifacts, fashion, museum, animation strategies, body, display Introduction the word curator is derived from the Latin curare, which means to care, but this is only one aspect of curatorial work. In the context of a museum, a fashion curator engages in a creative process to develop display of dress in an exhibition space open to the public. 1 This presents a range of challenges. One of the most difficult is how to indicate that a dress artifact was once worn by a living person and therefore embodies a complex interplay of cultural beliefs, identity, memory, and body imprints. When a garment is mounted for display, a dress form or a mannequin provides the necessary conservational support for the artifact but also serves as a substitute for the former owner s living body. Clothing takes form and is animated by the body. However, in the context of a museum, a dress artifact can only ever represent a fragment of its story, according to scholar Joanne Entwistle: 1 The terms dress artifact, fashion, and costume have been used in this paper to distinguish the subtle nuances of meaning. The term dress artifact describes garments that have been preserved in the context of the museum archive; these items may or may not have been fashionable at the time they were worn. Fashion is used to describe a garment that is considered a la mode. The term costume now generally is used to describe garments worn in the theatre, although it is still associated with collections of dress artifacts. For an in-depth analysis of the difference between fashion and dress Costume Society of America 2015 DOI 10.1179/0361211215Z.00000000038

38 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 museology, see Marie Riegels Melchior s Introduction: Understanding Fashion and Dress Museology, in Fashion and Museums, Theory and Practice (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 1 18. 2 Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 10. 3 Costume galleries are often darkened to conform to recommended illumination levels for conservation reasons. 4 Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, trans. David McLintock (London: Penguin Books, 2003). 5 Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams (London: Virago Press, 1985), 1. 6 V&A Furniture, Textiles & Fashion Department, accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/ articles/f/furniture,-textiles-and-fashion. 7 Costume in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed November 10, 2012, http://www.metmuseum. org/toah/hd/cost/hd_cost.htm. 8 Anne Buck quoted in Exhibiting Fashion: Before and After 1971, ed. Judith Clark, Amy de la Haye with Jeffrey Horsley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 54. The costume museum makes the garment into a fetish, it tells of how the garment was made, the techniques of stitching, embroidery and decoration used as well as the historical era in which it was once worn. What it cannot tell us is how the garment was worn, how the garment moved when on a body, what it sounded like when it moved and how it felt to the wearer. Without a body, dress lacks fullness and movement; it is incomplete. 2 This fragmentary nature of dress display in a museum can invoke the feeling of the uncanny and unease in a viewer, especially since costume galleries are often dimly lit. 3 The concept of the uncanny, the subject of an essay by Freud in 1919, concerns the intense feeling of strangeness that can occur when one encounters an object like a doll or a mannequin that is both familiar and yet also dream-like. 4 This unsettling sensation may arise when an object suggests both the illusion of life and a harbinger of death. For example, when an item of clothing is displayed on a mannequin, it may remind the viewer that the person who once wore the garment is no longer present. This element of the uncanny within exhibits of dress artifacts was noted by scholar Elizabeth Wilson in the opening passage of her book Adorned in Dreams: There is something eerie about a museum of costume in that the clothing on display hints at something only half understood, sinister, threatening; the atrophy of the body, and the evanescence of life. 5 From the time museums began to develop dress collections, curators have explored various means of animating their displays to try to replicate the vibrancy of the live body. This effort could be interpreted as an implicit acknowledgment that the element of the uncanny is present in dress displays. In the first part of this paper, the history of using living models to animate dress artifacts is reviewed in relation to museum practice standards. The second part discusses some of the curatorial strategies used to create the illusion of an animated body in exhibitions of fashion in the museum. History of Live Models in the Museum Collecting Western dress is a relatively recent practice in museology. For example, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London was founded in 1852, and initially collected garments for the purpose of illustrating significant textiles, but it was not until 1957 that the first fashion curator was appointed. 6 Similarly, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York did not become established as a department within the museum until 1946, long after the museum opened its doors in 1866. 7 This lag in development of dress collections has affected the perceived value of curatorial scholarship in the field. Curator Anne Buck observed in 1958: The collection and study of costume specimens with the same system of thoroughness as that devoted, for instance to the British flora, is a recent, and still limited, development in museums in this country. 8 This relatively short history of collecting dress artifacts within museology has meant that curatorial practices have been more fluid in development compared to those related to other types of artifacts. At one time it was common practice for museums to host annual runway presentations using volunteers dressed up in historic artifacts, offering both the wearer and the audience a multi-sensory experience of the garments. One such event took place on December 5, 1950 with Her Majesty the Queen in attendance at the New Theatre in London, England. This fundraiser for The Museum of Costume in Bath was organized

Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress 39 by Doris Langley Moore a self-taught dress historian and founder of the Costume Museum with garments from her private collection. 9 The program was divided into two parts and included live models wearing clothing from the mid-georgian period (1750 1790) to late Victorian period (1877 1895) before the intermission followed by clothing from turn-of-the-century (1896 1901) to the modern couturiers (1933 1951) that included a 1950 Worth gown. The list of models reads like a society page with names like Lady Selena Hastings, Lady Caroline Hastings, and Miss Lynn Redgrave. 10 More common was the use of live models in photographs for pamphlets, postcards, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and books related to museum exhibitions. Doris Langley Moore used children, society models, and actresses (including Vanessa Redgrave and Vivien Leigh) in the staging of photographs in her books The Woman in Fashion (1949) and The Child in Fashion (1953). In her preface to The Woman in Fashion, she endorsed this practice: I believe that never before has an attempt been made on such a scale to show authentic costumes worn by living models, and to present them as nearly as possible as they must have looked, or were intended to look, on their original wearers. 11 This aspect of museology could be one that many in the museum field would rather forget. Dress historian and curator Valerie Cumming spoke of the practice with some regret, referring to how, in her first curatorial position at Chertsey Costume Museum in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, she used bone thin students from the local art college in the photographs of the Olive Matthews collection. 12 She related: at the time, I sort of knew that I shouldn t be doing it, but learnt by observing that it posed great risks to the garments and that it was not to be done again. 13 The first publication that included photographs of live models wearing museum artifacts might be a 1913 book, Old English Costumes Selected from the Collection Formed by Mr. Talbot Hughes, a Sequence of Fashions through the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century. 14 This book included 59 photographs by society photographer Bertram Park, some of them color-tinted (figures 1 and 2), featuring women and men wearing historic costumes in both studio and outdoor settings. The department store Harrods, in conjunction with the Victoria and Albert Museum, commissioned the book to commemorate the donation of costumes dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that had once belonged to the painter Talbot Hughes. These garments were displayed for a period in the Harrods store alongside contemporary fashions of the time before transfer to the museum. 15 Anne Buck, Keeper of the Gallery of English Costume at Platt Hall in Manchester, England, was instrumental in writing guidelines related to dress for museum curators. The illustrations in her series of eight Platt Hall picture books for children published between 1949 and 1963 used live models. 16 Although she later revised her position, in 1958 Buck wrote about her preference for using live models in the Handbook for Museum Curators: The photographing of costumes worn by a living model for postcards or other publications can, if done with care, often reveal more of a dress and accessories, and the appearance of the time, than the photographing of the garments mounted on figures. But, great care must be shown, not only in the actual handling of the costume for this 9 The Museum of Costume at Bath was founded by Doris Langley Moore in 1963 and was renamed the Fashion Museum in 2007, http:// www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/about. 10 Program for A Vista of Fashion Through 200 Years presented at The New Theatre, London on December 5, 1950, 1 8. 11 Doris Langley Moore, The Woman in Fashion (New York: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1949), v vii. 12 The Chertsey Museum in the United Kingdom houses a collection of 4,000 men s, women s and children s fashionable garments dating back to 1700 that were donated by Olive Matthews. This collection is known as the Olive Matthews Collection, http://chertseymuseum.org/fashion. 13 Valerie Cumming, interviewed by author in Exeter, UK, July 6, 2014. 14 Philip Gibbs and Cecil Harcourt Smith, Old English Costumes Selected from the Collection Formed by Mr. Talbot Hughes, a Sequence of Fashions through the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century (London: W.H. Smith & Son, 1913). 15 Amy de la Haye, Chapter 1: Exhibiting Fashion Before 1971, in Clark, de la Haye, and Horsley, Exhibiting Fashion, 13 16. 16 Lou Taylor, The Study of Dress History (New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 49.

40 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 figure 1 A dress of charming proportion in beautiful French brocade, period 1785 1885. Old English Costumes Selected from the Collection Formed by Mr. Talbot Hughes, a Sequence of Fashions through the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century (London: W.H. Smith & Son, 1913), 31.

Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress 41 figure 2 An Embroidered Coat, with a lovely silk gauze skirt in fashion between 1850 and 1860. Old English Costumes Selected from the Collection Formed by Mr. Talbot Hughes, a Sequence of Fashions through the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century (London: W.H. Smith & Son, 1913), 61.

42 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 17 Anne Buck quoted in Clark, de la Haye, and Horsley, Exhibiting Fashion, 54. 18 Joyce Carter, Mod Styles of 1867, Globe Magazine, December 31, 1966, page unknown. 19 Katherine Brett, Modesty to Mod: Dress and Underdress in Canada 1780 1967 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). 20 Katherine B. Brett et al., Haute Couture: Notes on Designers and their Clothes in the Collections of the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969). 21 Patricia Harris, interviewed by author in King City, Ontario, Canada, October 22, 2012. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 45. purpose.the risk of damage to costumes from any re-wearing is, however, very great. 17 In 1966, associate curator Katherine Brett at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, chose nineteenth-century dress artifacts worn by a female model for photographs to publicize the exhibition Modesty to Mod (May 16 September 4, 1967). Three such photographs by Erik Christensen were published in the article, Mod Styles of 1867 and published in the Globe Magazine on December 31, 1966. 18 As well, several photographs of models wearing museum artifacts were included on the cover and within the exhibition catalog for Modesty to Mod. 19 A few years later in 1969, the Royal Ontario Museum published Haute Couture, a 68-page booklet that included photographs of two female volunteers modeling the gowns. 20 Mrs. Patricia Harris, one of the volunteer models, recounted her happy memories of wearing gowns for the booklet. 21 She said that the associate curator Katherine Brett didn t want a professional model; she wanted a real person. Photographer Lee Warren photographed Mrs. Harris wearing selected dresses over the course of a year. Mrs. Harris said that she had two pairs of shoes to choose from, neither of which fit properly, but that she often brought her own accessories such as jewelry, gloves and handbags. Before each session, Mrs. Harris would go to the hairdresser to have her hair styled for the particular period of clothing that she would be wearing that day. However, when published, the images in the book were altered with the models heads replaced by pencil illustrations; as well, the names of the models were omitted from the booklet. This was because Mrs. Harris husband declined to allow the photographs of his wife to be included in the book, because this was just not done in their social circle. 22 To this day, Patricia Harris retains a personal album of black and white photographs in which she is wearing eighteen haute couture garments from the Royal Ontario Museum collection that date from the 1920s to the 1950s (figures 3 and 4). The outfits included a 1933 Schiaparelli dress worn by Mrs. Eaton, the wife of Toronto department store magnate, as her going-away outfit, a black velvet 1937 Chanel evening gown, and a 1949 embroidered polka dot Dior cocktail dress. In a recent interview Mrs. Harris had clear memories of each ensemble, and, although more than 40 years had passed since those photographs were taken, she was still able to describe how the garment felt and whether or not it fit well. In reference to a teal blue wool Schiaparelli dress from 1938, she recalled that the bias moved and you could sit easily. She said that a 1920s beaded gown by Molyneux was very heavy and the panels swirled as you walked. She felt uncomfortable in a 1948 Jacques Fath brown satin gown because she said it was made for someone with a longer torso and thus did not fit properly. She remembered sweating heavily under the hot studio lights and wondered if these garments are now rotting in storage because of that. 23 Her comments make it clear that each dress embodied a different phenomenological experience for her in which she became aware of her body relative to that of the previous owner, and voiced what scholar Joanne Entwistle would describe as the edges, the limits and boundaries of her body in donning these museum artifacts. 24 A modern body stepping into a garment from the past may not be able to conform to the fashionable silhouette and posture of another time, as Mrs. Harris indicated by her feelings of discomfort when wearing the Fath gown. Curators in the past often skirted around this issue by selecting very slender models to act as living hangers

Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress 43 figure 3 Patricia Harris wearing an evening dress by Alice Thomas Toronto, 1930. Net, cellophane trim, crepe. Gift of Mrs. F.K. Morrow. Royal Ontario Museum 957.29.6.A-B. With permission of the Royal Ontario Museum ROM. figure 4 Patricia Harris wearing an evening dress by Bernard 1900 1929, Toronto, 1930. Silk, gold thread. Gift of Mrs. Louis Mackay. Royal Ontario Museum 941.43.2. With permission of the Royal Ontario Museum ROM. for the garments they wished to animate. Nonetheless, aside from what we now recognize as conservation concerns, a garment that once belonged to another person is subtly altered when worn again. This could destroy critical evidence of the marks and imprints of the original wearer. During the late 1970s and 1980s, some curators became more sensitive to the problems created by the wearing of dress artifacts. In the introduction to the museum practice guidelines presented by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Costume Committee, Chairman June Swann alluded to the need for change:

44 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 25 ICOM Costume Committee Guidelines Introduction, accessed September 25, 2013, http://www. costume-committee.org/index. php?option=com_content&view= article&id=17&itemid=24. 26 Yvonne Deslandres, quoted by Philip Sykas in Changing Views of Textile Conservation, ed. Mary M. Brooks and Dinah D. Eastop (Los: Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2011), 311. 27 Philip Sykas, Caring or Wearing? Museums Journal 87, no. 3 (1987): 155 157. Reprinted in Brooks and Eastop, Changing Views of Textile Conservation, 311. 28 Ibid. 29 Phillip Sykas, email message to author, July 10, 2014. 30 ICOM Costume Committee Guidelines for Costume, accessed September 25, 2013, http://www. costume-committee.org/index. php?option=com_content&view= article&id=17&itemid=24. 31 Brooks and Eastop, Changing Views of Textile Conservation. 32 Costume Society of America Overview and Resolution, accessed October 30, 2012, http://www. costumesocietyamerica.com/ aboutoverview.htm. In the early 1980s it became obvious that a general change in museums policy and direction was threatening the survival of costume collections. Costume, being made largely of textiles, has a limited life and requires special treatment if it is to survive even in an ideal museum with specialised staff. 25 Even so, not all curators agreed that there was a need to change. In 1981, Yvonne Deslandres, Curator at the Musée des Arts de la Mode in Paris, indicated her preference for using living models in photographs of historic dress: The elegance of clothing can only be appreciated when it is worn by a living being, for which it was conceived The curator of a costume museum cannot plan exhibitions in movement, but can almost always dress a living model in an historic costume [for] the time needed for a photograph. 26 In his 1987 Museums Journal article Caring or Wearing? textile conservator and curator Philip Sykas used Deslandres quote as evidence of the divisive opinions among museum professionals about the practice of wearing museum artifacts. 27 Sykas acknowledged the considerable pressures that curators faced from charities and important donors to use live models for photography. He reviewed the types of precautions adopted by those condoning the practice, including the use of dress shields, cotton tacked inside the neckline and cuffs, absorbent undergarments, and a headscarf to be worn while dressing but he found them insufficient to protect the garments. 28 He backed up his convictions with scientific analysis of the damage caused by microscopic skin fragments and body secretions. Sykas recently explained his motivation for writing the article: At the time I wrote the article, there was a resurgence of wearing historical dress in several contexts: auction house sales (notably Sotheby s sale of Ballet Russes costumes worn by dancers in full make-up, charity events (even the Art Fund ran fancy dress events encouraging wearing of historical dress), celebrity dandies (such as V&A curator of Prints & Drawings Stephen Calloway), and the movement toward populism in museums (encouraging handling of collections). With this resurgence, there was increasing pressure on curators of dress to allow collections to be worn, and this propelled me to write the article knowing that I could do it from a scientific angle rather than simply an emotive one. 29 Sykas article is still cited as a reference in guidelines for costume display on the ICOM website 30 and the article was republished in the 2011 book Changing Views on Textile Conservation. 31 In 1987, the Costume Society of America formally passed a resolution to discourage the wearing of museum artifacts, as published on their website with capitalization of certain words for emphasis: The Costume Society of America acknowledges that clothing is designed and created to be worn. However, with age or associations, clothing takes on particular values and meanings and deserves special care and consideration. The wearing of articles of attire inevitably exposes them to dangers of damage and deterioration; these dangers increase with the age and/or fragility of such articles. Therefore, the Costume Society of America encourages persons and organizations charged with the preservation of costume to prohibit the wearing or modeling of articles INTENDED FOR PRESERVATION. 32 Current practices in museums now preclude wearing dress artifacts as a means

Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress 45 of display. Curators of costume are limited to static presentations of museum artifacts on mannequins and dress forms. Given these limitations, how do contemporary curators of fashion and dress artifacts mediate the uncanny display of lifeless garments? The next section will examine several strategies that have had mixed results. Strategies for Animating Fashion Without Live Models In her 2002 book The Study of Dress History, curator and dress historian Lou Taylor wrote at length about the history of dress display. Although she acknowledged that the whole range of human experience attached to the wearing of clothes is inevitably lost on the static dummy placed behind glass, she concluded that there seems to be little that the curator can do to lift the gloomy impression left by conventionally sound dress displays, except to try and educate the viewing public into a more sympathetic understanding of the problem. 33 It is unlikely that anyone would use the word gloomy to describe the exhibitions Diana Vreeland created for the Costume Institute at the Met in New York from 1973 until her death in 1989. Incorporating never-before-seen stylistic elements such as abstracted colored mannequins, props, music, and perfume, Vreeland exhibitions were immersive and aesthetically pleasing. In a Vanity Fair article, curator Harold Koda was quoted as saying about Vreeland: She wanted the mannered exaggeration of fashion the thrill of the new. The original, awed, hysterical response, which is always a component of fashion. It was absolutely not the truth she was after. 34 The theatricality of Vreeland s exhibitions drew in record crowds to the Met for shows like The World of Balenciaga (1973), The Glory of Russian Costume (1976), and Vanity Fair (1977). However, Vreeland s cavalier approach to fashion drew significant criticism for the lack of scholarship and the liberties taken with historical facts. 35 The 2002 exhibition, Elite Elegance: Couture Fashion in the 1950s at the Royal Ontario Museum curated by Alexandra Palmer, set out to interpret the museum s 1950s couture collection within the sociocultural framework of the postwar years in Toronto, as well as highlight the significance of the Toronto women who wore these designs while leaving a lasting mark on Canada s cultural and social history. 36 Palmer used various techniques to engage the viewer in the couture experience: archival film clips of fashion shows in Toronto, staging of tableaus, and audio clips of oral history interviews. The gowns were presented in a mixed display of headless dress forms and abstracted white mannequins without wigs. I recall entering this elegant display, one of my first experiences with fashion in the museum, and feeling a sense of quiet reverence in the hushed galleries with their informative panels and cordoned off tableaus of inanimate mannequins. In a reflective article for Fashion Theory written several years after the exhibition, Palmer notes: It was clearly not as animated as Prada s Waist Down: Skirts. 37 Palmer s ironic comment refers to the staging of fashion exhibitions by designers in commercial venues who do not have to abide by museum practice standards. In the exhibition Palmer referred to, Waist Down: Skirts, 100 skirts from the Miuccia Prada archive were displayed in Prada stores in Tokyo, Shanghai, New York and Los Angeles between 2004 and 2006. Unconventional mounts were used and in some cases the skirts were under-lit and/or suspended from the ceiling on rotating armatures to create universes of ingeniously choreographed motions. 38 According to the exhibition designer AMO, From the waist down, the 33 Taylor, The Study of Dress History, 26 47. 34 Amy Collins, The Cult of Diana, Vanity Fair, November 1993, accessed November 14, 2012, http://www. vanityfair.com/culture/features/ 1993/11/diana-vreeland-199311. 35 Debora Silverman, Selling Culture: Bloomingdale s, Diana Vreeland, and the New Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan s America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986). 36 Alexandra Palmer, Untouchable: Creating Desire and Knowledge in Museum Costume and Textile Exhibitions, Fashion Theory 12 (2008): 50. 37 Ibid. 38 Prada Projects: Waist-Down 2012, accessed October 30, 2012, http:// www.prada.com/en/waist-down.

46 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 39 AMO-designed exhibition of the Prada skirt collection, accessed October 30, 2012, http://oma.eu/projects/2004/ prada-waist-down. 40 Jeffrey Horsley, Re-presenting the Body in Fashion Exhibitions, International Journal of Fashion Studies 1 (2014): 81. 41 Taylor, The Study of Dress History, 27 28. 42 Claire Wilcox, quoted by Lou Taylor in The Study of Dress History, 28. 43 For a complete listing of the Fashion in Motion Series visit Victoria & Albert Museum s website link, accessed November 10, 2012, http:// www.vam.ac.uk/page/f/fashion-inmotion/. 44 Video Fashion in Motion: Ma Ke Wuyong, Curator s Talk, accessed November 10, 2012, http://www.vam. ac.uk/content/videos/f/video-fashionin-motion-ma-ke-wuyong-curatorstalk/. 45 Brooklyn Museum Guide to the Records of the Department of Costumes and Textiles 1911 2004, accessed November 14, 2012, http:// www.brooklynmuseum.org/ collections/libraries_and_archives/ uploads/c&t_final.pdf. human body is engaged in dynamic movements: walking, sitting, dancing and this exhibition was designed to celebrate the joy of wearing and seeing skirts in motion. 39 This type of mount would not have been possible within a museum setting because the associated movement, light levels and open display would be in violation of international museum practice standards. This example highlights the blurring of lines between what is on display and what is for sale in commercial venues, as well as the far greater range of display strategies that can be used with garments outside of the museum. Curators in museum settings need other strategies to replicate the energy and vibrancy of the live body. According to exhibition maker Jeffrey Horsley, the mount is not the only means of replacing the body, and exhibition curators conjure up stance, gesture, energy, dynamism, movement and attitude suggestive of the human body through a variety of strategies. 40 With developments in technology, curators have new methods of creating dynamism in the gallery with simulations of live bodies using film, video, music, and performance within the gallery. In the summer of 1999, curator Claire Wilcox introduced a live performance series called Fashion in Motion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 41 At specified times live models wearing non-collection garments promenaded through the galleries. By showing garments in motion that were not museum artifacts by designers such as Philip Treacy and Alexander McQueen whose work was also on display as museum artifacts, the curator hoped to convey the energy of fashion as performance and to reveal the beauty of contemporary fashion to a public that is used to seeing fashion in magazines but has rarely seen such ensembles or models in the flesh. 42 Since then, the Victoria and Albert Museum has regularly staged Fashion in Motion, featuring designers such as Alexander McQueen (1999), Jean Paul Gaultier (2003), Gareth Pugh (2007), Giles Deacon (2009), and Ralph & Russo (2014). 43 In a remarkable twist of staging of this series during the 2009 China Design Now exhibition, the collection of Ma Ke Wuyong was displayed on live models standing atop lighted clear plinths. The models were motionless while the audience was moving. In a video clip about the show, an unidentified V&A curator said: The usual format for Fashion in Motion is a catwalk show in the Raphael Gallery space and the audience is seated either side of a long runway, but for this show, obviously, we ve really departed from that. So we ve taken a bit of a gamble, in the sense that it s [the] audience that are in motion, but the idea of showing fashion on a live, breathing model is still there; that s inherent in the display, although the models themselves aren t moving. 44 Although the Fashion in Motion series has not and does not use historic artifacts for performance, the program indicates the curators implicit acknowledgement of the continued relevance of the live model to animate fashionable clothing in the museum. At the same time, these live shows illustrate that fashion curators must compete with other spaces of fashion such as retail stores and runway shows to bring audiences into the museum. Showing non-museum garments alongside museum artifacts of the same date or quality presents many philosophical problems in museology, since it can be difficult for the public to distinguish between what is worthy of preservation and what is not. Other curators have employed mechanical devices to simulate the effect of live bodies on the runway. The 1972 Brooklyn Museum exhibition, Costume Theatre, in which over 50 dressed mannequins appeared on a

Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress 47 figure 5 Animated mannequins at Montreal Museum of Fine Art exhibition, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk. Photo by author, June 22, 2011. Ingrid Mida. continuously moving mechanical belt. Above the stage a multi-media presentation depicted fashion plates, portraits, and architecture, which related to the costumes below. 45 Similarly, in the 2011 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, a motorized belt moved about twenty mannequins around a simulated runway. 46 Although a motorized catwalk created motion, the device did not really replicate the energy of a live runway show because the belt was jerky and mechanical. Beyond the motorized runway, the Gaultier exhibition went to great lengths to create the illusion of real humans with the unprecedented development of animated mannequins (figure 5). During the press preview for the Gaultier show, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts museum director and chief curator Nathalie Bondil said: Fashion exhibitions can be really dead and Jean Paul Gaultier said it should be really alive. 47 To this end, exhibition curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot collaborated with Quebec theatre producers Denis Marleau and Stephanie Jasmin to create a new type of mannequin with animated faces by projecting video clips onto three-dimensional sculpted masks. The mannequins stared into space, blinked, sang, and spoke in both French and English. In scripts that evoked the sentiments of Gaultier, they said, for example: I am what I am ; Je suis que je suis ; I am the woman I want to be. As life-like as they were, these mannequins had an uncanny presence and were described by the press with phrases such as creepy and fascinating and bizarre. 48 Like clothing 46 This exhibition was first presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (June 20 October 2, 2011) and then traveled to stops that included: Dallas Museum of Fine Art (November 13 February 12, 2012); De Young Museum in San Francisco (March 24 August 19, 2012); Fundacion Mapfre in Madrid (September 18, 2012); Kunsthal Rotterdam (February 10 May 12, 2013); Brooklyn Museum (October 25, 2013 February 23, 2014); Barbican Art Gallery (April 9, 2014 August 25, 2014), and National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia (October 17, 2014 February 8, 2015). 47 Nathalie Bondil, interview by author on June 21, 2011 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Available at: http:// www.fashionprojects.org/?p=2694. 48 Kristen Philipkoski, March 26, 2012, The Creepy Awesomeness of Talking Mannequins, accessed November 11, 2012, http://gizmodo.com/5896447/ wonderfully-creepy-talkingmannequins-wear-jean-paulgaultiers-couture.

48 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 49 Metropolitan Museum of Art Press Release dated August 8, 2011, accessed November 11, 2012, http:// www.metmuseum.org/about-themuseum/press-room/news/2011/ mcqueen-attendance. 50 Andrew Bolton, with contributions by Susannah Frankel and Tim Blanks; photography by Sølve Sundsbø, Alexander McQueen, Savage Beauty (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011). The McQueen exhibition will be restaged at the Victoria and Albert Museum, March 14 July 19, 2015. 51 Philip Sykas, Caring or Wearing? 315. 52 Olivier Saillard, quoted by Sarah Hay in Dances with Woollens: Actress Tilda Swinton Stars in Sartorial Showcase, Financial Times of London, September 29 30, 2012, Arts section: 3. 53 Event archive entry at Palais de Tokyo, accessed December 23, 2014, http://palaisdetokyo.com/en/ exhibition/performances/ olivier-saillard-tilda-swinton. 54 Saillard, quoted by Hay, Dances with Woollens, 3. 55 Suzy Menkes, Madame Grès as Sculptor, The New York Times, April 18, 2011, Fashion & Style, accessed December 23, 2014, http://www. nytimes.com/2011/04/19/ fashion/19iht-fgres19.html?_r=0. displayed without embodiment, these mannequins were uncanny. Although attention getting, this innovative technology has not been adopted by other fashion curators. The 2011 exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition at the Costume Institute at the Met drew in a record number of visitors and ranked among the Top 10 Most Visited Exhibitions in the museum s history. 49 This fashion exhibition incorporated a range of display strategies to create animation within the museum space. Evoking a gothic fairy tale, the galleries were dark and dream-like, creating a multi-dimensional sensory immersion into the McQueen oeuvre. Movement was simulated with the use of revolving turntables for selected mannequins as well as with concealed fans that created the effect of wind blowing on some of the garments (figure 6). Video with looped clips from runway shows were projected within, behind, and around the objects, and in one case on the ceiling, animating the displays. A small-scale hologram of Kate Moss replicated her other-worldly presence in the McQueen s Autumn/Winter 2006 runway show. All these techniques created the illusion of a runway spectacle in the exhibit without using live bodies in accordance with museum practice standards. The exhibition catalog Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty included hauntingly beautiful images by renowned Norwegian fashion photographer, Sølve Sundsbø. In a remarkable use of photo manipulation, live models wearing white body makeup were made to look like inanimate mannequins by cropping off of their heads and adding articulated joints. These illustrations would not have been possible if this clothing had been part of the museum s collection. Rather, the clothing was selected from the designer s private archive. This catalogue was highly unusual and perhaps controversial, since this use of live models from private archives was a clever way around the restrictions on wearing dress artifacts in the ICOM rules on museum practice. 50 The risk of damage must have been great and raises the same questions of duty of care that Philip Sykas posed in 1987: the wearing of costume cannot be reconciled with the duty of the museum curator to preserve and protect the objects in his or her care. 51 Comparing the work of a contemporary museum curator to that of a choreographer, museum director and curator Olivier Saillard recalled: Two years ago, when I started the new job as director of the Musée Galliera, I realized that I was like a choreographer: costumes without bodies are my dancers. 52 Known for his experimental and creative approach to fashion curation, Saillard orchestrated the performance of actress Tilda Swinton engaging with selected artifacts at the Musée Galliera for the film Impossible Wardrobe presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris during September 29 October 10, 2012. 53 Saillard said: This isn t a theatre performance but a fashion and art performance, since Swinton was not able to wear the garments. Instead, Swinton interacted with 57 garments from the Musée Galliera archives, including a Dior dress once worn by the Duchess of Windsor, by holding and turning them. Saillard noted that at times, she appears to mimic the surgery-like work of the preservationist. 54 Swinton infused the artifacts with her energy. Saillard s creative innovation in dealing with what some might call old clothes has been described by Suzy Menkes as a rare combination of historian and showman. 55 This selective review of fashion exhibitions demonstrates that museum curators are conscious that fashion is created for live bodies and are making concerted efforts to create the illusion of animation to bring vigor and vibrancy to gallery spaces without

Animating the Body in Museum Exhibitions of Fashion and Dress 49 figure 6 Photograph showing wind effects in the exhibition of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by author, May 2, 2011. Ingrid Mida.

50 n Dress volume 41, number 1, 2015 the use of live models. Staging techniques including turntables, wind effects, lights, and mirrors, and technology such as film clips, hologram projections, and animated mannequins, as well as the use of performance in the gallery space, are all part of the repertoire of the contemporary fashion curator. Conclusion Museum dress collections and the development of associated curatorial standards have a relatively short history. At one time, wearing historic garments was encouraged, and photographing costumes on live models was commonplace. By the late-1980s the associated risks were better understood and museum practice standards changed to prohibit the wearing or modeling of articles intended for preservation. However, garments from private collections and archives are not bound by such considerations or restrictions. Staged in museums, art galleries, private museums, and commercial venues, presentday fashion exhibitions have become a new form of entertainment. The plethora of exhibitions makes it difficult for the public to distinguish between museum and commercial spaces as well as between museum and non-museum artifacts. Presented outside conventional museum spaces and not subject to museum practice standards, these displays of non-museum artifacts offer opportunities for experimentation not possible in formal museum situations. Challenged with the irrefutable fact that clothes are shown to best advantage on a living, breathing body, fashion curators those observing conservation standards and those who do not continue to investigate and explore creative ways to suggest or invoke the attitude, energy and dynamism of a live body. n Dress

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