by John Stuart Gordon et al. Yale University Press, 2023. 256 p. ill. ISBN 978-0-300-26615-3 $50.00.
Alex Austin Student Success and Assessment Librarian Pratt Institute Libraries
A Dark, a Bright, a Light dives into the career and work of textile designer Dorothy Liebes. Although Liebes frequently collaborated with the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, her name does not garner the same ubiquitous recognition today. This book and the accompanying exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt Museum set out to remedy that. Written in clear, accessible language, the book invites the reader to build an intimate familiarity with Liebes’ work through meticulously researched text.
Liebes boldly played with color, texture, and material in textiles that found life in drapery, upholstery, and clothing. In her Manhattan studio, which she dubbed the “Idea Factory,” Liebes made innovative use of metallic thread, bamboo, acrylic rod, ribbon, and negative space in her weaves. High-quality images throughout the book prove just as valuable for research as the accompanying text. Full-bleed close-ups of Liebes’ weaves reveal each thread. Vibrant magentas and reds glow against surrounding neutrals in luscious color reproductions of her fabric sample cards. The text posits that one reason Liebes’ influence is not better known today is that many existing reproductions of her work in situ are black and white.
Other archival materials, like advertisements, sketches, and photographs enrich the text. If repeated references to Liebes’ unpublished autobiography leave the reader yearning to find it, they will be satisfied to learn it is accessible as part of the fully digitized collection of Dorothy Liebes papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
The design of the book is largely aproppo for the subject of a designer, from the beautiful spreads down to the chartreuse thread running through the signatures. The only place where the quality of the book’s design falters is in the unusual case binding. The book block, which features an exposed spine binding, is only attached to the book board at the rear. The weight of the book block cannot be supported by the endpaper when the book is held open at a forty-five degree angle, resulting in the failure of the adhesive between endpaper and book board. Additionally, the front of the case binding retracts from the fore edge, leaving pages vulnerable to damage. Librarians should make note that if the book is circulating, it may require rebinding sooner than other titles, through no fault of the patrons who have handled it.
In the acknowledgements, author Susan Brown describes the book as, “the result of [coauthor Alexa Griffith Winton’s] fifteen years of research plus three years of joyful, frenetic, collective activity.” That joy for work resonates throughout this impressive text, just as it does through Liebes’ groundbreaking, iconic textiles. This book is a necessary addition for any library that serves a population of fashion, textile, or interior designers.
Austin, Alex "Review: A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes," ARLIS/NA Reviews, 2024. https://doi.org/10.17613/6nk5-qw08.
As I entered The Metropolitan Museum of Art on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I found it packed with a crowd larger than I had seen at any museum in years. While this could admittedly be attributed to many factors, as I worked my way up to the second floor it was immediately evident that the substantial crowd was here for the Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beautyexhibition. Between the long line and the longer online queue to enter, the draw of the latest Costume Institute show was undeniable.
The exhibition served as an unconventional retrospective of the titular designer’s work throughout the course of his over sixty-year career. The show featured Lagerfeld’s designs and drawings that he created under major fashion houses like Chanel, Fendi and Chloé, all tied together by two lines, one curving and one straight. This pair of lines is a concept from William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty that attributes liveliness to the curving line and stillness to the straight, and throughout the exhibition we can see these concepts in tandem through each collection of objects as Lagerfeld’s designs play with how the two interact in contrast and emphasis of each other.
Each section of the exhibition played on the juxtaposition of Hogarth’s thesis, with the concepts manifesting throughout Lagerfeld’s work across his career. Some examples of this include feminine and masculine lines (Images 1,2), historical and futuristic lines (Images 3,4) and floral and geometric lines (Images 5,6). The overall set-up and concept of the exhibition is legible to the everyday Met visitor, whether they are well-versed in fashion or not, and the striking beauty of the garments shown cannot go understated. From the moment I entered the exhibition space, I saw a showcase of expert tailoring and construction done by the seamstresses of the various fashion houses that bring Lagerfeld’s designs to life.
Image 1. Masculine / Hailey J. ByrdImage 2. Feminine / Hailey J. ByrdImage 3. Historical / Hailey J. ByrdImage 4. Futuristic / Hailey J. ByrdImage 5. Floral / Hailey J. ByrdImage 6. Geometric / Hailey J. Byrd
Where the exhibition excelled was in the details that feel removed from Lagerfeld even by only a degree or two: the opening focus on the expert seamstresses, side-by-side art comparisons and unique exhibition design. The exhibition is winding, with black and white displays accenting the garments in addition to spotlights brightening the displays in the room’s dim lighting. Most of the garment displays also showcased photo comparisons of art that the designs clearly mirror and are really eye-opening for people who may not have a strong art history background (Images 7,8). Seeing the archival pieces displayed together, likely at the only time they’ll be in the same room, was undeniably cool, but just as undeniable as the beauty of the garments on display, were the pervasive thoughts of Lagerfeld’s past that ran through my head as I moved through each room.
Image 7. Chanel S/S 1984 / Hailey J. ByrdImage 8. Art comparison / Hailey J. Byrd
As any chronically online, pop culture and fashion news consumer knows, Lagerfeld has made many racist, anti-feminist and fatphobic statements. In an interview with the Business of Fashion Podcast, the exhibition’s curator Andrew Bolton stated that the motivation for focusing only on Lagerfeld’s creative output without the inclusion of his problematic past was that he couldn’t really know what Lagerfeld believed to be true or what he was just saying as deflection. Ultimately, this choice to pick what aspects of Lagerfeld are worth displaying fails to give the exhibition complexity and honesty while opting for ease and commerciality. The absence of this critical commentary was largely expected, regardless of Bolton’s commentary, when considering the funding put forward by Chanel, Fendi and Lagerfeld’s namesake brand, but it did not lessen the feeling of disappointment.
Overall, Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty was an exhibition that was clearly compelling to the masses at The Met, and while it had things that worked well, those things were undermined by the overall theme lacking complexity. The exhibition favored unnecessarily answering the question of whether we can separate the art from the artist, rather than leaning into the nuance and allowing visitors to decide for themselves. Ultimately, The Met failed to find a grey area in Lagerfeld’s black and white palette.
Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty ran at The Met from May 5 to July 16, 2023.
Bolton, Andrew, Karl Lagerfeld, Tadao Andō, Anita Briey, Stefania D’Alfonso, Olivia Douchez, Amanda Harlech, et al. Karl Lagerfeld : a Line of Beauty. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023.
Amid an impressive display of construction scaffolding, viewers of The Museum at FIT’s Fresh, Fly, Fabulous: Fifty Years of hip-hop Style, got a glimpse into the tangible and figurative ways in which hip-hop artists built spaces for themselves using fashion. The exhibit highlighted often overlooked Black and Brown creators who influenced fashion on a global scale but that have gone unnoticed and unappreciated in fashion spaces. While the show was visually overwhelming, it was an homage to hip-hop’s stylistic use of bling, logos, and iconic symbols to create unique identities through clothing that critics have previously deemed to be “too much.” Ultimately, Fresh, Fly, Fabulous was a celebration of hip-hop culture and the power of style in creating a community.
Fresh, Fly, Fabulous was featured at The Museum at FIT from February 8 to April 23, 2023 and included more than one hundred pieces of clothing and accessories representing fifty years of cultural history beginning in 1973. Neighborhood parties in the Bronx were the birthplace of b-boy and b-girl styles and where Black and Brown youth congregated. DJs and MCs popularized styles by customizing and personalizing their clothing using spray paints, adding additional seams to their jeans, and ironing patches on garments themselves. The exhibition illustrated this formative period with satin bomber jackets and ephemera from the popular nightclub The Disco Fever, which provided groups like Run-DMC and Wu-Tang Clan with their first venues. The nightclub’s owner, Sal Abbatiello, lent these Disco Fever jackets as the earliest examples of hip-hop fashion branding in the exhibition.
Individual creativity in hip-hop style was emphasized with items lent to the museum from the people who lived through these moments in hip-hop and fashion history. Examples like Tommy Boy Records, which used popular ski accessories in the 1990s including ski caps and lanyards to promote concerts. The limited nature of concert lanyards made them highly sought after, and boosted the status of whomever had one as an accessory. Flat-laced sneakers, sunglasses worn by Run-DMC, and LL Cool J’s Kangol cap punctuated the importance of accessories and customization in hip-hop. Further, this inclusion of actual clothing as emblems of hip-hop’s history showed hip-hop and fashion as inextricably linked. Fashion as we know it today was changed by hip-hop forever just as hip-hop artists’ lyrics, and styles were linked to fashion.
The inventiveness seen in early hip-hop fashion evolved as the music became more mainstream in the 1980s and 1990s. Utilizing symbols and logos from some of the world’s most high-end fashion brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, the hip-hop community refashioned luxury designs to suit more unique and over-the-top clothing that those brands did not offer. Dapper Dan, a prominent creator of hip-hop style for instance, created his own statement pieces this way, taking brand logos and elevating them, earning him power and recognition in hip-hop spaces.
While mainstream fashion brands were slow to collaborate with hip-hop fashion creators like Dapper Dan, they used artists like LL Cool J to serve as spokespeople. In a 1997 Gap commercial, LL Cool J wore a hat and sang lyrics that promoted a Black-owned brand called FUBU. He sneaked in the lyrics, “for us, by, us on the low,” the brand’s acronym, which went completely unnoticed by Gap for several weeks after the commercial aired. This story is representative of Black artists using platforms be they neighborhood parties in the Bronx or Gap commercials to pave their own way and make their own styles, to define hip-hop fashion for themselves.
My favorite piece in the exhibition was the denim ensemble worn by Lil’ Kim for the 2003 Spike Video Game Awards (Figure 1). The outfit fuses hip-hop style with an historical silhouette resembling a late eighteenth or early nineteenth-century embroidered men’s coat, referencing a style of floral motifs stitched along the lapel, on denim instead of silk and paired with a miniskirt instead of pants. These traditional symbols of high society are paired with denim, which according to Lynn Downey in her article “Blue Denim Down by the Bay: The Levi Strauss and Co. Archives,” was created as a sturdy material for laborers in the nineteenth century that went on to represent subculture movements in the 1950s and, later, hip-hop,
Figure 1 / Rachel Walker
I would also like to applaud the multicolored mannequins used in this show that reflected a wide spectrum of Black and Brown skin tones. Fashion exhibitions have been using the same glossy white mannequins for displaying clothing for decades. Scholars Bridget R. Cooks and Jennifer A. Wagelie in their book Mannequins in Museums, voiced their disdain for the appalling lack of diversity in fashion exhibitions both in terms of including a range of skin colors and body types as a part of the narrative of historical fashion in particular. The color of the mannequins in Fresh, Fly, Fabulous is so important for the purpose of this exhibition in recognizing Black and Brown artists. Even though it is something you don’t see often enough in fashion exhibits, it felt so natural that it wasn’t something I noticed until looking at the photos I took at the exhibition later that day. Mannequin color is a small detail not everyone is conscious of but that makes such a difference in relating the information about the exhibit, in this case, the focus on Black and Brown fashion creators in the realm of hip-hop style.
The placement of the mannequins on high scaffolding is a visually interesting and impactful way of showcasing the clothing with the exhibitions’ general theme. However, it was difficult at times to read smaller text which was placed low to the ground and try to match the correct block of text to the corresponding mannequin (this spatial distance is illustrated in figures 2 and 3). With a lot to look at in a smaller exhibition space, it wasn’t very accessible, and for those with mobility issues or vision impairments, this could potentially affect their experiences negatively.
Image 2 / Rachel WalkerImage 3 / Rachel Walker
Supplemental materials available online were provided to visitors through a Spotify playlist featuring artists and songs with strong connections to fashion through their hip-hop music. I really liked that inclusion of examples that represent hip-hop history and its ties to fashion. There is also an extensive reading list provided by the exhibition’s curators with book recommendations for those interested in learning more about hip-hop and hip-hop fashion history.
This exhibition covered fifty years of a subject that could easily justify an entire museum dedicated to hip-hop fashion. Hip-hop style has always been about individuality, establishing community and inventiveness. Much of the messaging is inclusive of a community that is largely underrepresented in the fashion museum realm and there is so much positivity to come from highlighting overlooked creativity like Fresh, Fly, Fabulous did.
The Museum at FIT 227 West 27th Street, New York City 10001-5992 Wednesday – Friday : Noon to 8 pm Saturday – Sunday : 10 am to 5 pm
This book is the first to focus on the work of the Chicana fiber artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood. Consuelo was introduced to textiles from an early age while growing up in California: her father was a weaver who created textiles inspired by his Huichol roots and her mother taught her how to embroider and crochet. Consuelo, who uses her work as a form of advocacy and expression, references ancient Mayan iconography; incorporates barbed wire and overlapping maps as a reflection on immigration and borders; and reuses trash, such as discarded Target bags, to draw attention to waste and consumption. In addition to her decades of work as an artist, Consuelo has also acted as an educator and was the Head of Fiber/Textile at the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University.
This volume is cleverly organized into three sections that reflect the process of weaving. The first part, “Spinning–Making Thread” contains two essays that provide biographical details about Consuelo and place her in the history of craft and the fiber arts movement. Part two, “Weaving–Hand Work,” takes an in-depth look at the work of the artist and is the longest of the three sections with eleven essays. The final part, ‘Off the Loom–Into the World,” contains three essays that focus on the artist as an educator and public figure.
While this book certainly provides a strong introduction to the artist from a scholarly point of view, it is not as successful as an introduction to the artist or her work. There is not a single photo of the artist in the book, and the first photo of her work doesn’t appear until page 91. Further, while there are 95 images of Consuelo’s work in the book, there are no detail images of her artistry. Textiles are better appreciated when one can see how the object was made, since an object’s structure and technique reveal the artist’s process. If there were other books about Consuelo Jimenez Underwood that provided a more holistic overview of the artist, the book’s shortcomings would be easier to overlook. Instead, with its text-heavy contents, this book centers on what scholars have to say about the artist’s work rather than allowing the artist’s work to speak for itself.
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, is said to have removed his armored doublet before entering mass on December 26, 1476, because it made him look “too fat;” he didn’t make it out alive. Although this utterance may be apocryphal, and the garment would not likely have deflected his assassin’s blows, this episode typifies the high stakes of men’s quattrocento fashion in Timothy McCall’s Brilliant Bodies. McCall uses evidence from artwork, correspondence, inventories, etiquette books, and a few extant pieces of clothing to show how Italian lords used their appearance (and decked-out entourages) to project status and authority.
The book is divided into four main themes: the incorporation of metals into men’s attire, including armor and brocades; adornments, such as jewels, pearls, chains, and spurs; the idealized male body, with a focus on how the doublet and hose displayed slender torsos and elegant legs; and how “fairness” was equated with beauty.
Italian signore were hyper-conscious of their appearance and were constantly on display; artworks were a way to proliferate and enhance their image. McCall hones in on the details of men’s clothing represented in portraits and wall decorations, providing the reader with new perspectives on many well-known artworks. Techniques for producing various types of materials are explained, as well as how lordly buying habits influenced local and foreign industries. The use of emblems and colors (think two-toned stockings) to broadcast alliances is also elucidated. McCall aims to counter assumptions about beauty being the realm of women only, and to problematize how fashion has been employed by the powerful to legitimize and maintain their authority. He also explores the racial dimensions of the fifteenth-century obsession with “brilliance,” which included not just gold and jewels but also light hair and skin. Although modern conceptions of race were not yet calcified, the author asserts that Renaissance ideals of whiteness are worthy of critique.
Brilliant Bodies expands upon McCall’s past scholarship and joins a growing conversation on the topic of early modern men’s fashion; Elizabeth Currie’s Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (Bloomsbury, 2017) is one recent example. The book is printed on glossy paper and is generously illustrated, with many high quality full- and half-page color images. It includes a glossary of commonly misunderstood terms, endnotes, an extensive bibliography, and an index. McCall writes in approachable and often entertaining language, and weaves captivating incidents into his analysis. This text would be a valuable addition to collections supporting scholarship in art history, fashion history, and decorative arts and design history, and is appropriate for undergraduate students and above.
Fashion, Textile & Costume Librarians 