One of the most meaningful post-show bows ever taken at a fashion presentation was when the entire Christian Dior atelier came out on stage at the end of its 2011 fall/winter Haute Couture collection. Fifteen-year creative head John Galliano had just been infamously dismissed, and the full team's appearance was a gesture that highlighted the fact that a designer for a brand is only one cog in the creative execution wheel.
We've seen unprecedented results from international fashion exhibitions; why do you think there's such an appetite for these kinds of shows?
Fashion is something that everyone can relate to in a very personal way, whether you love it or hate it. It's a daily, ongoing relationship or trial that we have. With fashion, you can try on things and discard them or take them on physically in a way that you can't with any other form of decorative arts. It's also a way of expressing ourselves in very complex social, psychological and artistic ways. But fashion is very much associated with women and frivolity and vanity, so we have these huge complexes about it. Museum fashion exhibitions valorize it, and make it all right to think about fashion in an intellectual way.
Was there the same kind of gravitas to wearing a Dior label as there is today?
It was always prestigious to wear Haute Couture dresses. They're beautifully made and from Paris, so there's this magic about that. But it was a different time. Women wore the dresses for their social functions, for their daily lives, and for a lot of the philanthropic work they did — The Art Gallery of Toronto, as it was called, the symphony, the ballet, the hospitals. A lot of these women wore their suits to the committee meetings to plan the events. But what's really different is the consumption. Wardrobes weren't as huge and over-the-top as they are today. People really valued their clothes and they wore them a lot. The clothes were expensive, but not outrageously expensive. They were "affordable". They were for the elite, the women with means, but then they would donate them. There was no real vintage market until the late nineties, so they were given to the Hadassah Bazaar or the Junior League. As a member of the Hadassah or a member of the Junior League, that's what you did. And then they were also given to the museum, because the ROM's Betty Brett, the curator, was consciously trying to build up an Haute Couture collection at the Museum as examples of good design for Canadian designers and the public to learn about, and to be able to study.
