‘Fabric In Fashion’ at The Museum at FIT, New York.

An exhibition view of ‘Fabric In Fashion’
 (Courtesy: The Museum at FIT)

The Museum at FIT, New York, presents “Fabric In Fashion,” on view from December 4, 2018 through May 4, 2019.

"Fabric is the very stuff of fashion. The desire for textiles has driven the social and economic history of the world. Yet contemporary fashion consumers tend to give little consideration to the textiles they wear. For fashionable individuals of the past, however, textiles were their most valuable possessions. Knowledge of fabrics was commonplace. “A stylish eighteenth-century woman knew the high cost of silk brocade imported from China, the difference between wool fabrics appropriate for menswear and women’s wear, and that the most colorfast cotton calicos came from India. As late as 1955, market research by the United States Department of Agriculture reported that ‘nine out of ten women . . . were aware of the fiber content of what they were buying, and used that knowledge in their decision to purchase,’” says The Museum at FIT website.

“Fabric In Fashion” explores the cultural history of textiles in Euro-American women’s fashion over the last two and a half centuries in order to re-center the fashion narrative on materiality. The exhibition focuses on four of the most common fibers in Western women’s fashion: silk, cotton, wool, and synthetics. These fibers can be manipulated to different effects, creating unexpectedly diaphanous cottons and wools, or sturdy and sculptural silks. Synthetics can look sleek and futuristic or, conversely, mimic natural fibers and hand- crafted fabrics.

By Blouin Artinfo.

Full story at Blouin Artinfo.