Gothic: Dark Glamour

The Museum at FIT

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Gothic: Dark Glamour IntroductionThe Museum at FIT

Mourning ensembles (1800/1905)The Museum at FIT

Gothic Style

The exhibition begins by tracing the genealogy of gothic style. Beginning with the rise of the gothic novel in the eighteenth century, gothic style has been associated with sublime themes of terror and the supernatural. The perversely seductive image of the vampire evolved alongside the Satanic figure of the dandy. The Victorian cult of mourning mandated head-to-toe black, inspiring members of the goth subculture – and contributing to the image of the femme fatale and the vamp.

Evening dress (Spring 2007) by Riccardo TisciThe Museum at FIT

Evoking vampires (Fall 1981 and 1992)The Museum at FIT

"Night" Installation View (2008/2009)The Museum at FIT

Night

Night explores the symbolism of black. The gothic color par excellence, black has long been associated with death, danger, and evil, but also with mystery, elegance, and eroticism. "Obscurity is vertiginous. . . . When the eye sees black, the spirit sees trouble. . . . In the night, even the strong feel anxious."
 Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Suit and Necklace (Spring 2007) by Alexander McQueenThe Museum at FIT

Ensembles (Spring 2007) by Yohji YamamotoThe Museum at FIT

Evening dress (Spring 2007) by Giles DeaconThe Museum at FIT

Three black looks (Fall 2007 and Fall 2008)The Museum at FIT

Dresses (Spring and Fall 2008)The Museum at FIT

Dresses (1997/2008)The Museum at FIT

"The Ruined Castle" installation viewThe Museum at FIT

The Ruined Castle

The Ruined Castle evokes the paradigmatic gothic setting, which is often symbolic of the human mind, “psychology in stone.” According to the scholar Chris Baldick, a gothic work “should combine a fearful sense of inheritance in time with a claustrophobic sense of enclosure in space...to produce an impression of sickening descent into disintegration.” Some of the fashions on display allude to decay and destruction, while others suggest mental states, such as fear or passion.

Evening Dresses (Spring 2006 and Fall 2007)The Museum at FIT

Evening Coat & Man's Coat (1938/1990) by Cristóbal BalenciagaThe Museum at FIT

Ensembles (2000/2002)The Museum at FIT

Evening dress (Fall 1997) by Stefano DominellaThe Museum at FIT

"The Haunted Palace" Installation ViewThe Museum at FIT

The Haunted Palace

The Haunted Palace recalls Edgar Allan Poe's architectural metaphor for a disturbed mind. If fashion may be considered a type of "intimate architecture," then we might expect gothic fashions to manifest similar characteristics of imprisonment, ambiguity, and disintegration.

Evening dresses (1997/2007)The Museum at FIT

Evening dress (Fall 2006) by Riccardo TisciThe Museum at FIT

Evening dress (Spring 2001) by Alexander McQueenThe Museum at FIT

Evening ensemble (Fall 1997) by Thierry MuglerThe Museum at FIT

"The Laboratory" Installation ViewThe Museum at FIT

The Laboratory

Rubber curtains mark the boundaries of the Laboratory, where fashion “monsters” are created.

Corset (Spring 1999) by Alexander McQueenThe Museum at FIT

Ensemble (Spring 2004) by Kei KagamiThe Museum at FIT

Ensembles (2007) by Kei KagamiThe Museum at FIT

"Strange Beauty" Installation ViewThe Museum at FIT

Strange Beauty

In Strange Beauty, the fashions are characterized by unconventional shapes and strange sources of imagery such as the image of blood in water from Japanese horror movies that inspired Rodarte’s gothic evening dress.

Ensemble (2008) by Rick OwensThe Museum at FIT

Dress (Spring 1997) by Rei KawakuboThe Museum at FIT

Two black ensembles (Fall 2005 and Fall 2006)The Museum at FIT

Evening dress (Fall 2008) by Kate and Laura MulleavyThe Museum at FIT

Ensemble (Fall 2000) by John GallianoThe Museum at FIT

Evening dress and shoulder cape (2002 and Spring 2007) by BoudiccaThe Museum at FIT

"The Graveyard: Veils and Masks" Installation ViewThe Museum at FIT

The Graveyard

The Graveyard, surrounded by a black fence, evokes a sense of claustrophobia through the use of veiling, masking, and corsetry.

"The Graveyard: Veils and Masks" Installation ViewThe Museum at FIT

Top and Skirt (Fall 2005) by Hussein ChalayanThe Museum at FIT

Corset and Pants (1996) by Alexander McQueenThe Museum at FIT

"The Graveyard: Veils and Masks" Installation ViewThe Museum at FIT

Alexander McQueen ensemble & Skingraft ensemble (Spring 2007 and Fall 2008)The Museum at FIT

"The Bat Cave" Installation View (2008/2009)The Museum at FIT

The Bat Cave

The Bat Cave uses two-way mirrors to permit lightning glimpses of a range of goth subcultural styles, from old-school goth to cyber goth. Contemporary goths tend to be much "more dialectically engaged with the past than is typical of most youth subcultures." Not only do they draw inspiration from subcultural antecedents, such as punk and glam rock, they also draw on an eclectic historical canon of literary, aesthetic, and philosophical traditions; or they dig deeply into the history and associations of the gothic.

Ensemble (Fall 2008) by Naoto HirookaThe Museum at FIT

Ensembles (2000/2002)The Museum at FIT

Cabinet of CuriositiesThe Museum at FIT

Cabinet of Curiosities

This Cabinet of Curiosities refers back to the wonder rooms or memory theatres of the Renaissance, collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were unclear: Natural history, religious relics, art objects – all were included in these princely collections. The human skull is the type of object once treasured as a memento mori (a reminder of death), later collected as a scientific specimen, and now ubiquitous as an inspiration for gothic accessories.Other objects on display include a death mask, Victorian mourning jewelry, a top hat tattooed with the image of a bat, and accessories that incorporate bird skulls, talons, and wings – alluding to themes such as death, time, and transcendence.

Gothic: Dark Glamour PanelThe Museum at FIT

Credits: Story

Organized by MFIT Director and Chief Curator Valerie Steele
Art Director: Simon Costin
Exhibition Designer: Charles B. Froom
Exhibiton Manager: Fred Dennis

Support for this exhibition was provided by:
The Coby Foundation, Ltd.
ILORI
Couture Council at the Museum at FIT

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.