‘Fashion in Colours’: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, 9th December 2005 - 26th March 2006. This exhibition focuses on the use of colour within fashion in the past 250 years and encourages visitors to think about the ‘emotional, symbolic and cultural associations of colour’ (Nicklas, C. (2007) ‘Exhibition Review: Fashion in Colours’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, Vol 11 Issue 2/3, pp. 369 - 376. doi: 10.2752/136270407X202871.)
I can see why this should be considered but personally, I think it is only relevant to the older garments, where this was more relevant. For example, colour was very symbolic of wealth and class, which was far more significant in the past. But these days, I think class is less significant and I would say it is defined by brands rather than colour, such as, upper class wearing design brands like Chanel, and lower classes wearing high street brands like New Look. Regarding emotion, let’s take the example of white. White ‘represents’ virginity and purity, which is where we get the white wedding dress from. But again, I think although the white wedding dress is still very clear in the current day, it’s lost it’s original meaning. In the past, not only were people more religious than they are today, but sex was a form of taboo. As they years have gone on and sex has become something that we openly acknowledge and speak about, it has become far more relaxed and you don’t have to be married or in a relationship to have it. Looking at it from the religious side as well, as science has improved and essentially, proved the bible wrong, there are far less people that are strictly religious. And I also think, of those people who are religious, they still have more relaxed issues towards sex as what would of been many years ago. Thus resulting, in more people having sex before marriage and therefore, are not virgins when they do get married.
I think that, although this exhibition is about looking at the colours in fashion, I don’t think we should be specifically looking entirely at the colours, as we are encouraged to do. If we take the colour red and look at it’s associations, theres anger, danger, love: contradicting emotions. Whereas if we also look at the shape of the garment, it gives us a better idea of what the designer is trying to portray. For example, if it was a really pointy, rugged structure, we would associate it more with anger, compared with a nicely rounded structure which we would associate more with love.
Moving onto the specific curation of the show, each colour is put in an individual room, with only one room being multi-coloured. I disagree with this, because if we are exploring colour in fashion, we should also be looking at how colours can work together, particularly looking at contrasting colours. Also, the main rooms are black, white, blue, red and yellow: the primary colours and the absence of colour. What about the secondary colours? You can’t put a green garment in with blue, for example, as it isn’t just blue, it is also made from yellow. Surely, if we are looking at colours, all should be considered.
In conclusion, within fashion, I think it’s wrong to just look at the single colour and associations of the colour as the shape and material of the garment also plays a big part of the designers ‘message’.
Nicklas, C. (2007) 'Exhibition Review: Fashion in Colours’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, Vol 11 Issue 2/3, pp. 369 - 376. doi: 10.2752/136270407X202871.
