A missing memory

My father was a tailor and my mother is still the fashion star at her Bridge club but I have only recently come to appreciate fashion as a thing of dignity and sociability and creativity. Fashion Icons at the Art Gallery of South Australia was my most recent visit to this omnipresent but unknown world. It's a display of women's fashions (with just one palette of extravagant recent men's fashions) covering the period from the '50s to the present, by decades. It's heavy with French names, starting with a black dress from Christian Dior, but there are others. I enjoyed the outing with Mum, especially as so many of these styles graced her wardrobe as I grew up. I enjoyed the female chatter and absorption with the topic, for the attendees were mostly women. (it's said that women dress for other women). I enjoyed the creativity and the winks at tradition and the humour, not least the metal dress and the videos of how they dressed the model. My favourite was a recent one, a dress in triangular form, all green, blue, aqua with feathers, and a classic bodice above. I'd give you the name of the designer, but the exhibition's website is tragically limited and I didn't take notes. That's disappointing. I'd like to revisit, but the memory is nowhere to be found: no pics; no online catalogue. Very disappointing. So this outing is a blurred memory. A lovely exhibit that takes me back to my visit to its source, the fabulous Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. But I found it disappointingly lacking in generosity, with its commercially-themed website and the missing catalogue. AGSA, have I just misplaced it? If so, just say the word. In the meantime, the exhibition is easy to recommend but a good memory would be an advantage.

Fashion Icons is a display of French fashion from ~1950s to today on loan from the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. It's on display at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Thanks to Wikipedia Commons for the pic: Flying mannequin by Christine Zenino of Chicago, USA.