The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art gets acquainted with its first ever fall exhibition titled ‘Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire’. The exhibition opens on 21st October and features the never talked about, yet in-demand costumes catering to the grieving occasions and the funerals.
The show has been carefully arranged chronologically from 1815 through 1915, featuring as many as 30 looks which portray the transformation of mourner’s wardrobe through various stages of grief.
Far from displaying the so called ‘sad’ ensembles, the exhibition is rather a detailed study of an ancient ritual that was mainly expressed via fabrics, i.e., matte right after the death of a beloved, with a gradual introduction of colour, pattern and even shine as the mourner works through the grief.
Speaking of the utmost priority of the organisers behind this exhibition, they looked forward to it as an opportunity to show how 19th century high-fashion evolution overlaid with an important social condition, a protocol for ritualizing social interactions, which was both a cultural and a fashion phenomenon.
Besides, the exhibition also features ranging from fans and parasols to a carved jet 1860 necklace and several lockets featuring enamelled images of the deceased.
The exhibit is surely an illustration of the long lost fashionable past of mourning and its remembrance.
It will run through 1st February 2015 at the Anna Wintour Costume Centre.
