Is Fashion Modern?

On the eve of the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark exhibition on the past, present, and future of fashion, Metropolis VP of design Paul Makovsky spoke to MoMA’s senior curator Paola Antonelli about why she chose to put on a show about garments, why Bernard Rudofsky (who curated MoMA’s first show on fashion back in 1944) remains as relevant as ever, and the challenges of selecting fashion objects that have had a strong impact on the world.

- Paul Makovsky

Paul Makovsky: Why and how did you come up with the idea for Items: Is Fashion Modern?

Paola Antonelli: I’ve been at MoMA for 23 years now, and I came on board having studied architecture, and having worked in fashion—I was an intern working for Armani’s PR office in Milan. So I was always thinking about fashion.

At MoMA, I started to sort of assess the landscape—I saw the Geoffrey Beene exhibition at FIT that blew me away—and I asked Philip Johnson, who had interviewed me for my job, “What about fashion?” And he gave me the official explanation: Fashion is so ephemeral, it’s so dictated by seasons, it really goes against the idea of timelessness that is at the core of the idea of Modern.

I just didn’t buy it because he had done the Deconstructivist Architecture show, and there was nothing more ephemeral, more trend-based than that show. I kept mulling it over, then slowly I would inject little pieces of fashion in the collection, but always based on other excuses, like with the Humble Masterpieces exhibition—we added the white T-shirt—or another time we added the Final Home parka.

PM: How did you organize your research for the exhibition?

PA: I kept this list called “garments that changed the world.” I was convinced that you cannot tell a real, MoMA-style history of Modern design and architecture without garments. So fashion is the system and clothes are the pieces inside. I kept this list, and at some point, I was talking about it with the chief curators and MoMA’s director, Glenn Lowry, and he said, “Have you thought of doing the fashion show?” And I said, “Let me try.”

PM: How many items did you finally end up with?