The Museum at FIT

I wasn't really sure what to expect from the museum at FIT, as a personal opinion I don't have much if an interest into museums. FIT however, despite being fairly small, engaged my interest and enabled me to actually enjoy my time looking around. If any of you don't know, FIT is a museum at the Fashion institute of Technology in New York City.

This part of the museum in particular focused on the body and the desired fashionable body throughout the centuries. All about 'fashion and the physique' a plaque fixed on the wall read: "The ideal fashionable body is perpetually changing cultural construct, yet it does not feel so fluid in daily life. It can loom over us as a rigid expectation, affecting how we view and treat out bodies, as well as how we view the bodies of others". This is a statement i can particularly relate to and I'm sure many others feel the same. This statement merely describes the journey through the exhibit, exploring complex history over the past 250 years.

Due to there being so many garments and statements in the exhibition, i am just going to quickly talk about a couple of my favourites, and also the most shocking ones that stood out to me.

Firstly the corset, but not just any corset- a corset for pregnant woman. This item, designed in 1900, had me drawn a-back by, purely because it was designed to camouflage the changing bodies of those women. Unlike a traditional corset which usually laces up at the back, this one laced up from the sides and was adjustable for a growing belly (something that would come in handy for me after a roast dinner, haha). The corset did have some advantages to pregnant women, providing support to the back and the belly.

The next thing that i found interesting was the sharp shift from the desired 'hourglass' figure to the idealised 'straight and narrow' figure. This came from an illustration in Vogue that depicted the new ideal body shape of 1925, fitting in more to the idea of a slender and athletic figure. This was created around the time that the 'girdle' was being advertised. The girdle was designed in order to make you appear much slimmer, not only around the waist, but around the hips too. This design was made fully out of rubber and was said to melt away unwanted fat. It was described in an advertisement as: 'a gentle-like massage movement that reduces flabby, disfiguring fat with every movement'. I feel like this body type was much desired and reinterpreted in the 20th century and people would prefer to have a slender figure rather than a curvy one. However in recent years i feel that individuals have idealised figures of celebrities and in particular the Kardashians. People would much rather have that 'thick' figure and the saying of 'does my bum look big in this' is now a positive rather than a negative saying.

Lastly, i wanted to talk a bit about getting past the previous 'heavily structured' styles and how in the 1960's fashion was focused on 'freeing the body'. The mini dress was a garment often seen on model Twiggy. This design matched with most other designers of the time, including Rudi Gernreich's who had a large interest in freeing the body. This was evident in his own Ready to wear. Gernreich created a mini dress which had to clear panels down either side, exposing the body. He also created the 'no bra' bra made from a sheer, lightweight nylon- designed to provide support but not alter the shape of the natural breasts.

Overall i really enjoyed viewing how the ideal body had developed through the ages and i thought it was really interesting how history repeats itself in fashion and how much of these garments have been reinterpreted in todays society. I also thought it was amazing on how in 2018 we are now focusing largely on just embracing how your body is naturally and instead of there being one idealised figure, society sees it exceptable to love yourself for who you are.

#FIT #NYC