Exhibition
Items: Is Fashion Modern?
1 Oct 2017 – 28 Jan 2018
Regular hours
- Sunday
- 10:30 – 17:30
- Monday
- 10:30 – 17:30
- Tuesday
- 10:30 – 17:30
- Wednesday
- 10:30 – 17:30
- Thursday
- 10:30 – 17:30
- Friday
- 10:30 – 17:30
- Saturday
- 10:30 – 19:00
Cost of entry
Adults $25
Address
- 11 West 53 Street
- New York
New York - NY 10019
- United States
Travel Information
- From the east side of Manhattan M1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to 53rd Street From the west side of Manhattan M50 cross-town to 50th Street. Proceed to 53rd Street.
- From the east side of Manhattan 6 train to 51st Street, transfer to the E or M train; one stop to 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue From the west side of Manhattan E or M train to 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, or B, D, or F train to 47-50 Street Rockefeller Center
Items: Is Fashion Modern? explores the present, past, and future of 99 items—garments, accessories, and accoutrements—that have had a strong impact on history and society in the 20th and 21st centuries, and continue to hold currency today.
About
Among the 99 will be designs as well-known and transformative as the Levi’s 501s, the Casio watch, and the Little Black Dress, and as ancient and culturally charged as the kippah and the keffiyeh. Each item will be displayed in the incarnation that made it significant in the last 116 years—the stereotype—along with contextual materials that trace back to its historical archetype. In some cases, the item will also be complemented by a new commission—a prototype. Items will thus invite new generations of designers, engineers, and manufacturers to respond to some of these “indispensable items” with pioneering materials, approaches, and techniques—extending this conversation into the near and distant futures, and connecting the history of these garments with their present recombination and use. Driven first and foremost by objects, not designers, the exhibition considers the many relationships between fashion and functionality, cultural etiquettes, aesthetics, politics, labor, identities, economies, and technology.