New York...Flirting With the Dark Side

Miriam Murphy, a costume conservator, sat bent over 
a cutting table at the rear of the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art the other day, laboriously reapplying sequins
 to a silk chiffon mourning gown that last saw light 
when Queen Alexandra of England wore it in 1902....

That shimmering dress, along with some 30 somberly 
modish 19th- and early 20th-century garments, 
was being resurrected, lovingly readied for a second 
life as part of the museum’s fall exhibition, sassily 
entitled “Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire.”

The show’s opening on Tuesday, just in advance of Halloween, 
was pure happenstance, said Harold Koda, the curator in charge, 
the exhibition itself born of his interest in extreme 
fashion silhouettes, but refocused when the Met 
acquired a selection of mourning costumes from 
the Brooklyn Museum.

“But a show on mourning would he appropriate any time,” 
Mr. Koda said. “Mourning, if you take a superficial view,
 is incredibly chic.”

Indeed, bereavement and its handmaiden, melancholy, 
seem to be sharing a moment of late, taking center stage 
or hovering in the wings of several current museum exhibitions, 
on television shows and in films, and in fine art and music, 
lending a whiff of glamour to a topic most people 
would prefer to ignore. 
That aura may partly explain why in recent months many 
Americans have suspended their dread of the D word 
to indulge a romance with the Reaper.

 

A silk and mousseline mourning ensemble from the 1870s 
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new show 
“Death Becomes Her.”Credit
Karin L. Willis/
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“There is this darker feeling, a pervasive sense of melancholy 
in culture and fashion,” said Shelby Lee Walsh, 
the president and head of research at the Trend Hunter website 
— perhaps an acknowledgment, Ms. Walsh said, 
“that life isn’t as wonderful as we see it portrayed 
on our Instagram accounts.”....
[...]http://www.nytimes.com

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

...η έκθεση άνοιξε τις πύλες της 
την Τρίτη 21 Οκτωβρίου και θα διαρκέσει 
έως την 1η Φεβρουαρίου 2015.

Η πριγκίπισα Michiko πλησιάζει το φέρετρο του Αυτοκράτορα της Ιαπωνίας Ηirohito

Η βασίλισσα Βικτώρια μετά τον θάνατο της κόρης της Αλίκης, 
μαζί με τον συζυγό της και τα υπόλοιπα παιδιά της.

Πηγαίνοντας στον ιππόδρομο μετά τον θάνατο 
του βασιλιά Εδουάρδου του 7ου στο Λονδίνο.

Η Τζάκι στην κηδεία του JFK - όταν οι ΗΠΑ λύγισαν από θλίψη.

Η Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ στην κηδεία της Εντίθ Πιάφ.

Φόρεμα για βαρυπενθούσα στη βικτωριανή εποχή.

Η ηθοποιός Πόλα Νέγκρι υποβασταζόμενη από φίλους 
στην κηδεία του Ροδόλφο Βαλεντίνο.

Πηγή: iefimerida.gr