Other publishing news: I have an essay on Marc Jacobs in the book Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion and Architecture. Do you think that means that I will finally get invited to Marc’s fashion shows in New York?

The Museum at FIT held its annual Fashion Symposium on December 4-5 on the theme American Style. Speakers included Caroline Millbank on “The Origins of the American Look,” Kohle Yohanan on “The Small Town Girl and the Femme Fatale: Claire McCardell and Valentina,” and Patricia Mears in conversation with designer Charles Kleibacker.

Together with members of the Couture Council, I made a field trip to visit the designer Prabal Gurung.  When I saw his collection during New York fashion week, I was struck by how modern and elegant it looked, and how enthusiastically it was received by the fashion press.  Visiting designers’ ateliers is one of the best parts of joining the Couture Council, and everyone who came really liked Prabal and admired his designs.  He was so articulate (and talented) that I asked if he would speak at FIT as part of our Fashion Culture program next spring, and he said “yes” –  so make a note to come see him!
Then I swept uptown to attend a private luncheon in honor of Donatella Versace.   The ultimate fashion look on this occasion was sported by Daphne Guinness, who wore truly vertiginous shoes by Nina Ricci. Later that evening, I went to a book signing for Pamela Golbin’s catalogue on Madeleine Vionnet.  Clearly, I will have to get to Paris before her exhibition closes at the Musée de la Mode, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see so many dresses by one of the greatest fashion designers ever.

The following evening, I attended the Fashion Group International’s Night of Stars, where Oscar de la Renta, Michael Kors, Stephen Jones, Frieda Giannini, Renzo Rosso, and others were honored.  Awards ceremonies have their longueurs, but Iman gave an absolutely stellar speech and Simon Doonan made us laugh out loud.  Sadly, the next day I was tortured at the dentist, who used phrases like “a bloody mess” to describe my mouth.
Late the following week, I flew to Mexico City to give a talk about the Museum at FIT. The Universidad Iberoamericana was holding a big design conference, so I met a lot of interesting scholars and artists from around the world.  I also got to experience a little bit of the Day of the Dead, when fashion designer Lydia Lavin took me to a cemetery.

So now I’m back at the salt mines, and tomorrow we have the opening reception for Patricia’s glorious new exhibition, American Beauty.

Last Friday, I went down to Philadelphia to see the exhibition Shopping in Paris: French Fashion 1850-1925 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, it featured about 30 dresses, plus accessories and visual materials, such as film clips courtesy of the Gaumont Pathé Archives and the WPA Film Library.  There were many covetable items, including an 1850s evening dress with a saucy swing design, said to be after Watteau (although surely The Swing was by Fragonard?); an 1886 dress that had belonged to Mrs. Ernest Fenollosa when her husband was director of the Imperial Museum in Tokyo (this is exactly the time that ruling-class Japanese women started to wear western fashions); a beautiful white velvet dress with mink trim and Ottoman-inspired bead embroideries by the Callot Sisters; a rare Yteb dress (by George Hoyningen-Huene’s sister, Betty); and a Poiret that was the gift of Vera White (she and her husband donated the gorgeous Matisse Yellow Odalisque in a neighboring gallery).  Shopping in Paris was simply but elegantly displayed with dresses mounted on period Kyoto mannequins with paper wigs. Upstairs was another small exhibition, Inspiring Fashion: Gifts from Designers Honoring Tom Marotta, which included mostly recent looks by Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Zac Posen, Valentino, etc. It would have been nice to know how the dresses had been chosen.

I continued down from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., where I went to the opening of the exhibition Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Mary Baskett Collection at the Textile Museum. Mary was there to see the display of about 40 looks by her three favorite designers — Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons — dating from the late 1970s to the present. The exhibition was organized by guest curator, Cynthia Amnéus.

The following day was devoted to a fascinating symposium, From Kimono to Couture: The Evolution of Japanese Fashion, with great speakers such as Liza Dalby (author of Kimono: Fashioning Culture and Geisha) who spoke about the relationship between kimono and geisha, and Yuniya Kawamura (author of The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion) who spoke about contemporary Japanese subcultural styles. Yuni is contributing a chapter to the book that will accompany my upcoming MFIT exhibition, Japan Fashion Now.

Japan Fashion Now opens in September 2010, so I am really busy writing the book and finding the right clothes to include in the exhibition. Yuni is helping me find some great subcultural styles, since I want to go beyond high fashion  to include street style. Of course, I’m also including Mary’s Big Three, as well as Junya Watanabe, Tao Kurihara, Jun Takahashi of Undercover, Sacai, Number (N)ine, etc., etc. But I’m equally interested in the clothing worn by gothic lolitas, the members of speed tribes, and all the pink highly decorated kawaii styles.

More to come…