A dress from Minnesota is having a major fashion moment in New York City.
A 1938 Schiaparelli white matelasse silk gown printed in wood grain with a matching jacket and leaf-shaped button is on loan from the University of Minnesota's Goldstein Museum of Design to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute exhibit "Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations."
According to Goldstein assistant curator Jean McElvain, the Met found the dress through the museum's relatively new digital database project, which catalogs the collection and makes it widely available online. The Met has included the dress in a section dedicated to the surrealist tendencies of featured designers Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada.
"It certainly has subtle surrealist qualities to it and blends art and clothing," McElvain said. "The fabric of the dress is the beautiful bark print and the pattern was ... distorted and pulled off to the side, extending the surrealist vision of collapsing objects and kinds of different forms moving in and out of rigidity. It also is kind of aligned with Greek mythology and the transformation of [Daphne] into a tree."
The dress came into the Goldstein's private collection through a private donor in 1984. A faint purple wine stain on the front of the jacket proves it was worn, which didn't surprise McElvain.
"It has an unusual fabric and definitely references to a surrealist movement, but not as blatantly as some of her other work," she said. "So it would appeal to someone in the middle of the United States who wanted to wear something that's actually quite classic and refined."
Getting comfy with moccasins
Moccasins are getting a makeover, thanks to Itasca Leathergoods.
In addition to its wide variety of styles, the shoe label based in Lake George, Minn., now offers the option of choosing your own colors. It can customize the basic canoe-style Cota in 27 colors of full grain leather, more than 20 suedes, and other options in buffalo and elk hides.
