Fashion Obsession

I mentioned in my last post that I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a couple of weeks ago. Since I was small (my family lived nearby) I have wandered around the Met, and always had favorites that I visited each time. Because I tended to visit my favorites over and over I sometimes overlooked other areas of the museum, which I remedied on my last visit by exploring other nooks!

However one of the favorites, that I unfortunately missed this time, is The Costume Institute. It is definitely worth a visit if you go....The dresses are exquisite and are an art form themselves. Along with the costumes, the displays are works of art themselves; the lighting and the mannequins specific to each dress. I decided to sketch a little today and sketched the above two from their collection.

Sketching fashion drawings reminded me of the obsession I have had with the evolution of fashion since I was a kid. I used to go to the library and drag out the heaviest, biggest reference books I could find and studied everything from midievil fashion all the way trough the twentieth century. I drew them. I could identify a dress from the 1830's vs. 1840's based on sleeve style and skirt length. I ate this stuff up.

My aunt was a Manhattanite and lived on the upper east side during the 50's. She was single, glamouros, and beautiful. She wore the best gowns, dated the best men, and had a drawer full of the best costume jewelry my dazzled eyes had ever seen. Adding to the allure was the fact that she kept them hidden in a secret drawer in her sideboard. She would show me her dresses, gloves, hats from her glory days. She even had a suitcase hidden in her closet full of glamourous 1950's lingerie that my mother found after my aunt passed away. Since she was single, I can only use my imagination on what they were used for.

But between my natural interest in fashion and this real life glamour plate in my life, I really loved the drawings the designers did before the dress was completed. They were beautiful to me. At some point an antique store owner gave me these original fashion drawings when I was a child. I know nothing about the designer but I will have to check. Sketching today reminded me that I had these so I dug them up.