Celebrating over a century of designs by women

An ongoing show at the Met tracks the legacy of well-known as well as little-known designers from 1910 to the present day

- Pooja Singh

As soon as you enter the Carl and Iris Barrel Apfel Gallery in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, you meet the La Garconne: a black silk dress with a white collar and cuffs created in 1923 by Madame Charlotte of the French fashion house Premet. This “little black dress”, born three years before Coco Chanel designed the LBD, has flashes of androgyny. It became one of the most copied designs of the time.

A few steps away is a 1968 white evening dress with rose appliqué, by Ann Lowe. A black woman designer, Lowe was the brain behind former US first lady Jackie Kennedy’s 1953 wedding gown but didn’t get the credit for it for years. On the left, is the famous Delphos gown, a finely pleated silk garment made to be worn without underwear. Its design was, for decades, attributed to Spaniard Mariano Fortuny; the actual designer was Henriette Negrin Fortuny, his wife.

The three pieces of fashion history are part of Women Dressing Women, an exhibition of 80-plus costumes by the Met’s Costume Institute celebrating the work of over 70 women designers from the early 20th century to the present.

While you glance at the 1920s flapper dress, admire the 1960s’ and 1970s’ jumpsuits, or get bedazzled by slinky slip dresses of the 1990s, a question keeps popping up: In a world where conversations around women’s representation at the workplace have become more than just topics of PowerPoint presentations and social media debates, why did it take so long for a major institution to shed light on female designers who have shaped fashion as we know it today? Women Dressing Women becomes more important in this context and, hopefully, indicates a change is in the works.