Enter the Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries on the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s first floor Oct.16 and the legacy of Dior will greet you.
Two onyx-toned mannequins stand side by side, each dressed in a Dior design created decades apart. To the right is a pale-pink two-piece day dress with full skirt and nipped waist designed by Christian Dior in 1948. To the left is its counterpart: a hot-pink suit reminiscent of a Barbie dream, complete with bubblegum-hued fur lining and designed by John Galliano for Dior circa 1998.
Together, the outfits — separated by 50 years of design — embody the range of looks to be displayed in PMA’s latest exhibition, “Fabulous Fashion: From Dior’s New Look to Now.”
The exhibition, which features more than 60 ensembles plus hats, shoes and purses, showcases the scope of couture fashion in the past 70 years, in addition to the recurring styles that connect designs through the decades.
“Fabulous Fashions” uses Dior’s “New Look,” the post-World War II fashion revolution that traded masculine shapes for the ultra-feminine, as the exhibition’s style benchmark. The 1948 pale-pink Dior dress at the entrance epitomizes the look: nipped waist, drooping shoulders and rounded hips.
The exhibition encompasses the creations of more than 30 designers who made a mark on high fashion. Besides Dior, other designers include gay greats Pierre Balmain and Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Kristina Haugland, the exhibition curator and The Le Vine associate curator of costumes and textiles, said the inspiration for “Fabulous Fashions” sparked after PMA received two large donations of couture: one in 2009 from Annette Friedland and another in 2013 from the late Kathleen Field.
When PMA asked Haugland to expand a smaller exhibition of the donations she’d originally proposed, she turned to the museum’s rarely seen collection of 37,000 costumes and textiles to stock her show.
All the designs in “Fabulous Fashions” come from PMA’s permanent collection.
“Nobody ever really shines a light on our costumes and textiles collection just because we don’t have the space to showcase it,” said Joy Deibert, PMA’s senior press officer. “All these examples are from our own collection. We didn’t have to lend or borrow from any other institution in order to tell this story. It’s all a Philadelphia story.”
PMA launched the fashion wing of its costumes and textiles department in 1947 — the same year of Dior’s new look — in response to a growing interest in couture as art. Soon after, the museum began receiving fashion gifts from designers and donations to supplement the growing collection.
The exhibition contains some of the best of PMA’s costumes and textiles.
Instead of organizing ensembles chronologically, Haugland grouped outfits by their domineering style feature. The exhibition has six sections: “Shape and Volume,” “Embellishments,” “Color and Pattern,” “Metallic,” “Drape” and “Bridal.”
Haugland said she categorized the displays to help viewers realize the frequent motifs that run through couture, regardless of the decade or who’s designing.
“I’m trying to make it an immersive experience where you really come in and look at things in a new way, make connections and appreciate the art, because it is a three-dimensional art form.”
Haugland added that she hopes visitors can move past just liking or disliking a piece and assess the ensembles as parts of a whole in the world of couture.
The exhibition is set up as a walk-through from introductory Dior to wedding fashion, where Grace Kelly’s wedding accessories are on display. Included are her wedding headpiece, pumps and a prayer book she carried down the aisle.
Wall didactics designate each section. The main gallery space is dedicated to the 15 “Shape and Volume” dresses, the exhibition’s largest category. Designs date from a 1951 Balenciaga flamenco-skirted evening ensemble to an evening dress from Oscar de la Renta’s 2006 collection.
A multitiered platform acts as a center stage for the bulk of the “Shape and Volume” ensembles. The lights above the platform are programmed to transition gradually, bathing the dresses in warm, then cool tones.
“You won’t even necessarily be aware that it’s happening, but if you look back and see things, it’ll look very different in a different light. I hope that it will encourage people to kind of linger and look at things,” said Haugland. “It’s really a visual feast.”
Among Haugland’s favorite pieces — she said they change all the time — are the 1947 Woman’s “Sea Fan Fantasy” Dress, an aqua crew-neck number adorned in metallic sequins. The dress was designed and hand-painted by Philadelphia native Tina Leser and prefaces the “Embellishments” section.
Another standout is the “Metallic” section’s 1966 Paco Rabanne dress constituted of tiny plastic discs linked by chains.
“For his first collection, he actually dispensed with sewing all together. [He] called the collection ‘12 Unwearable Dresses,’” said Haugland.
And then there’s the Lacroix catsuit, a kaleidoscopic one-piece designed by Christian Lacroix for his fall/winter 1990 collection and donated by Kathleen Field in 2014.
“It’s not something I would ever prance around in, but it just looks like a lot of fun,” Haugland said. “But, you know, you look at some of these designs and the ingenuity behind them and the way that they’re made — and for people who sew, especially, or people who look at design, it’s really very inspiring.”
“Fabulous Fashion: From Dior’s New Look to Now” runs Oct. 16-March 3 at Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. Tickets are included in the price of general admission, which is $20 for age 19 and up. For more information, visit philamuseum.org.