Wedding ensemble, Karl
Lagerfeld (French, born Hamburg, 1938) for House of Chanel (French,
founded 1913), autumn/winter 2014–15 haute couture, back view; Courtesy
of CHANEL Patrimoine Collection (Courtesy of © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art)
NEW YORK—”In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last
refuges of the human, the personal, and the individual,” said French
designer Christian Dior.
The extent to which this is still true is the subject of Manus x
Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, the exhibition that opened May
5 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Curator Andrew Bolton explained that the inspiration for the show
came while he was was examining Yves Saint Laurent’s famous 1965
“Mondrian” dress, which reflected the linear designs of the painter.
“We discovered it was made almost entirely by machine,” he said.
This seemed to go against the traditional distinction between haute
couture and prêt-à-porter—a distinction between the handmade and the
machine-made or ready-to-wear.
“Traditionally the hand has been identified with exclusivity,
spontaneity, and individuality, yet ultimately representative of
elitism, the cult of personality, and a detrimental nostalgia for past
craftsmanship,” explained Bolton, while the machine has been associated
with progress, mass production, inferior quality, dehumanization, and
homogenization.
He hopes to “liberate the handmade and the machine-made from their
usual confines” and show that the pieces on show are merely at various
points on the “manus-machina continuum,” increasingly falling somewhere
in the middle, where designers are happy to combine the hand and the
machine to fulfill their creative visions.
Case in point is the exhibition’s reigning centerpiece—the wedding
gown by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel’s 2014 couture collection with a
massive golden train, which he described as “haute couture without the
couture.”
For Bolton, it exemplifies the best sort of hand–machine fusion.
Seemingly baroque, it is made of a synthetic fabric called scuba
knit, which was hand-molded, machine-sewn, and then hand-finished;
covered in intricate embroidery of pearls and gemstones. The massive
pattern was hand-drawn, then computer manipulated, to give it a
randomized, pixelated feel. The machine aids in the realization of tried
and true forms.
Craft Versus Design
Given that the manufacturing of textiles on a wooden loom is one of
the oldest of human technologies, Bolton’s point is rather moot. What
remains of the argument is restricted to the confines of the distinction
between haute couture and the prêt-à-porter garments as dictated by the
Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, which bestows the label of Haute
Couture on the fashion houses that abide by its handwork regulations.
In the context of haute couture and prêt-à-porter, the exhibition’s
message is akin to a newsflash that is broadcasting decades old news.
But Bolton is optimistic of unrealized possibilities.
“Through the marriage of the handmade and the machine-made, a new
aesthetic is emerging—one of exacting beauty and unfettered imaginings,”
concluded Bolton in his opening remarks.
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