Women Fashion Power - review
Rebecca Swirsky reviews the Design Museum's exhibition Women Fashion Power, which is on until 26 April 2015.
Social history and high fashion come together in the Design Museum's new exhibition, Women Fashion Power, an examination of how women have asserted their status and personality through what they wear. While fashion exhibitions are known for highlighting fabulous clothes, social history shows tell stories through objects and texts. The curators of Women Fashion Power have blended the two approaches together in an attempt to create a coherent vision, and commissioned Zaha Hadid to design the exhibition, adding idiosyncrasy and stardust.
The exhibition begins with a Corridor of Power - portraits from Boudicca and Joan of Arc to Angela Merkel and Hilary Clinton -- before a 150-year timeline illustrates moments in the development of women's dress until now. Labelled Freedom from Constraints and Freedom to Choose, this section covers periods such as the Arts and Crafts movement, the early suffragette movement and feminism's first wave.
But, taking the lion's share of space is the exhibition's star draw, Arena of Power -- a series of mannequins in outfits lent by 26 power players, including Vivienne Westwood, Skin from the band Skunk Anansie, Camila Batmanghelidjh, Kirsty Wark and Hadid herself, affording us a voyeuristic one-outfit glimpse into their wardrobes.
Zaha Hadid's aesthetic is evident in the exhibition's look. Photo: Mirren Rosie
Strip lighting and plinths at irregular angles, suspended mirrors, neon-green information points and dentist-white walls are in-keeping with Hadid's aesthetic, while her practice has written that the mirror panels 'accentuate the sense of fragmented energy and viewing perspectives that are all, ultimately, interconnected'. The fashion world craves to be taken seriously, so Hadid was a canny choice. 'I was very keen that we had a woman design the exhibition,' says co-curator Donna Loveday. 'Zaha talked about the concept for the show as evoking power and energy -- spiralling vortices leading to explosions of powerful women.'
Of her loaned Prada outfit -- a cream, silk cape and grey jewelled arm gloves -- Hadid writes: 'Each piece is an immaculately structured composition; a persuasive manifesto of Prada's unrivalled attention to detail.' Elsewhere in the show one can read critical ideas about the fashion industry. Skin admits: 'Designers do not always empower women or give us strength so I take it upon myself to reject pieces that dehumanise or objectify me.' Head of the human rights organisation, Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, having lent a cream dress made by her friend, the activist and fashion designer Westwood, asserts: 'The whole body image thing is still a massive issue, so I would love to see more diverse shapes, colours and sizes among models as well as clothes.'
Questioned about these worries, Loveday says: 'We didn't want to fall into the trap of another show about white guy designers. Looking at power-dress lists, we were asking ourselves, how are women in control?
Powerful women and their shoes. Photo: Mirren Rosie
The answer was not by studiously following trends.' As this was a show celebrating women's diversity, I asked why the clothes were all presented on thin, white, plastic mannequins. 'Good question,' Loveday replied. 'You're right. In reality we spoke to a number of fashion mannequin companies, but La Rosa donated these.'
Public galleries depend on such donations, but this surely shouldn't be to the detriment of a key tenet of an exhibition. On these homogeneous mannequins, certain outfits did not look like they belonged to the women in question -- again counterintuitive to the exhibition's aims.
And, while there is much to celebrate in this show, not least its link of the words 'women' and 'power', it is a shame that its anthropological intentions are seemingly given less spotlight than its lovely clothes. Unquestionably one of the exhibition's gems felt forgotten, squeezed into a tight triangle by a wall: a never-beforeseen handkerchief, made in 1891 by a man, that satirically envisaged the world 100 years later being run by -- horror of horrors -- women, featuring charming depictions of female sailors, doctors, barristers, lecturers, lawyers and chief justices.
Zaha Hadid -- contributor and exhibition Designer. Photo: Luke Hayes
It looks like it will be another 100 years and more for women just to have equality with men; in the month the exhibition opened, Britain's Global Gender Gap score -- covering economic participation, global attainment, health and political involvement -- was at its lowest since 2006, slipping the UK in international ranking from 18th to 26th, below Nicaragua, Rwanda and the Philippines.
In the shadow of this, the tone of the show comes across as prematurely celebratory, and the familiar pairing of women and image, like a too-tight jumper or pair of high heels -- a touch constricting.
