Blog Entry - BrandHabit

Paul Poiret Exhibit at the Met

In between spending copious amounts of money on clothing (more on that later), ingesting a spectacular amount of overpriced alcohol, and spending the days recovering by gorging myself on lox bagels, I somehow managed to fit a little bit of culture into my New York trip. Not a lot, but a little. (In fairness to me, this was a trip to see my three partners-in-crime from college, ergo excessive drinking and pretending you were 19 again was pretty much mandatory. You've gotta at least pretend you haven't lost your edge. Although I'm pretty sure I never had an edge, I was just borrowing one for a few years).

So I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the special exhibit there on Paul Poiret. I had read about it (in Vogue?) the month before and planned on going all along, and I have to say it was every bit as spectacular as I had imagined. The museum had literally hundreds of pieces by the French master, ranging from turn-of-the-century frocks to full-on flapper regalia. I also learned some pretty interesting facts about Poiret himself. Like basically, he was the first designer in history to use draping instead of patterns for his dresses. He could not sew. He stubbornly clung to his own ornate design sensibilites even as designers like Coco Chanel usurped his detailed embellishment with plain, simple, and wearable apparel. I don't know if you could rightfully call very many designers today true artists (perhaps with the exception of Nicolas Ghesquiere, Stefano Pilati, John Galliano) but Poiret was nothing if not an artist with a vision.

The clothes themselves were spec-freaking-tacular. There were chiffons weighted with what looked like about 40 pounds of ornate beading that had somehow miraculously withstood the past century not just intact, but in flawless condition. I drooled over glitzy flapper gowns and marveled at the modernity of his designs. Even today most of them don't look dated. There were even some shorter, sheer dresses he designed as negligees that I could see someone like Nicole Ritchie prancing around in today. It is amazing to me that there was actually a time in history where fashion was not cyclical. When it was actually innovative. Poiret took elements of orientalism, modernism, and impressionism, but his design concepts were like nothing that came before. Nowadays, designers simply borrow, borrow, borrow. In fact, a lot of them simply buy vintage pieces and deconstruct them to copy the pattern. I went into one fabulous vintage store called Cherry (in the West Village) where the proprietor told me that I had just narrowly missed Stefano Pilati, who regularly came in to buy up dresses to use for patterns. Personally, I don't blame them. How do you improve on perfection? You can't. You can just modify it. Try to tweak it without upsetting its genius.

Anyone who is going to be in New York through the fifth of August simply must see this exhibit. It is to die for. These dresses are so beautiful they could cure depression, AIDS, and world hunger. Now, how many of you can say that about that old black dress hanging in your closet?

source:www.girlawhirl.com