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http:// --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Local Issues Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage Hot Topics Most Viewed Forum Photo Galleries Video Readers Polls O-Zone Online Games Movie Preview Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Top Galleries: October 5, 2006 Museum teases treasures from trashed fashion By Valli Herman The Associated Press LOS ANGELES — It's no small feat, teasing out historical significance from two of fashion's most maligned decades, especially when they happened, what, two seconds ago? Yet, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new costume exhibition lines up proof that under all those acid-washed jeans and black pantsuits, the trashy 1980s and the brooding 1990s also had radical moments that still influence how we think about clothes. "Breaking the Mode: Contemporary Fashion From the Permanent Collection," which opened this month, is like a highlights reel of some of fashion's big ideas that, conceptually speaking, got even bigger through time: bustles, pouf skirts, distorted silhouettes and funky materials. Set in a museum, some of the runway's most outrageous moments look perfectly at home, such as Issey Miyake's "Minaret" dress that descends into a tower-like shape, or his "Flying Saucer" dress that looks like an expanded, rainbow accordion. Perhaps only in a museum could Rei Kawakubo's 1997 collection of pillows stuck under stretchy dresses be fully validated as art, not folly. Here, in hindsight, the exuberance of Christian Lacroix's 1980s pouf skirts seems like the inevitable interpretation of 19th-century pannier skirts. That's the strength of this exhibit — its ability to turn fashion insanity into the perfectly logical outcome of those ideas. Looking at a 1953 Rudi Gernreich red knit cocktail dress, we forget that corsets, girdles and extreme tailoring, not natural bodies, gave the era's garments their shape. Throughout the exhibit, we see how bodies gradually were allowed to shape clothes, and the converse — how designers disregarded the human form beneath in alien ways. Co-curators Sharon Takeda and Kaye Spilker of LACMA's costume and textiles department have created an instructional, cerebral overview of the major themes that emerged in the 1980s and evolved to challenge many clothing traditions. By adding historical costumes for reference, they establish the art worthiness of their acquisitions. The exhibition of more than 100 ensembles from about 50 designers aims to show how the wearer was, at last, given a say in how she wanted to look. It was only recently, in the curator's own 1950s youth, that designers dictated exactly how an ensemble should appear and guaranteed the outcome with sturdy, bulletproof tailoring. Although the exhibit's seminal era, the 1980s, is remembered for big hair and pouf skirts, it was also when Japanese designers began to challenge Western notions of design. Miyake and Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons shifted classic proportions, unstuffed rigid proportions and created new textiles that transformed clothing into kinetic sculpture. The exhibit also hints at how black escaped its mourning moorings and emerged as an everyday basic. In a notable 1999 Yohji Yamamoto ensemble, the designer blended a funereal menswear-inspired pantsuit with a huge, lacy wedding veil. Today, the idea of pairing a frilly blouse with a severe black suit seems completely natural. "We hope that people recognize that things may not seem radical today, but they were at one time," Spilker says. In that light, deconstruction emerges from artistic conceit to an accepted part of mainstream fashion. Classic tailoring that controlled the dimension of a pleat, flare of a skirt or shape of a shoulder was torn apart in the '80s and '90s as Jean Paul Gaultier, Martin Margiela and others explored deconstruction's frayed hems, exposed basting and inside-out ensembles. Junya Watanabe shredded denim to resemble lace, and Margiela created new garments out of retailored old ones. When Kawakubo inserted those organ-shaped pillows beneath sheer dresses nearly a decade ago, the new "bumps" they created commented on fashion's obsession with amplified body parts. An era of kidney worship never emerged, but her point was taken. We plumped our lips instead. Six years ago, when Gaultier cut a lining larger than a simple shift dress, the torque of the mismatched layers made the dress twist, creating with each step an unpredictable display of the red lining. Christian Dior, whose immobile, immaculate black '50s cocktail dress is displayed for comparison, would have been horrified by the randomness. "These are the innovators. These are the people from whom many things have happened," says Spilker. The exhibit showcases the strengths of the LACMA permanent collection, such as its focus on Pacific Rim designers. The show is weighted toward the Japanese with 22 pieces from Miyake, 13 from Yamamoto and 12 from Kawakubo. But there are weaknesses too, such as the absence of innovators Viktor & Rolf and not enough contributions from Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld or John Galliano. That's the benefit, and challenge, of being a modern-day costume curator: A lot of history still is hanging in closets. Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising: Debt Help Inkjet Printers Payday Loans Free Ringtones Debt Consolidation Water Filter Security Systems Debt Relief Advertisement: Copyright © 2007 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved. Del.icio.us