Fashionistas of the 19th – Early 20th Century. From the MAMM Collection

FASHIONISTAS OF THE 19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURY.

FROM THE MAMM COLLECTION

Curators: Anna Zaitseva, Maria Lavrova

The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents the exhibition ‘Fashionistas of the 19th – Early 20th Century. From the MAMM Collection’, showing the evolution of Russian fashion from the 1860s to 1910s. As a swift response to changes in society, fashion is always a mirror of its era, and costumes, accessories and hairstyles are excellent storytellers that convey historical and social vicissitudes, technical and cultural progress.

The exhibition includes more than 80 works, including photographs by famous photographers Carl Bergamasco, Elena Mrozovskaya, Pyotr Vedenisov, and others.

This exhibition created on the basis of MAMM’s extensive collection is divided into eight sections: Crinolines, Flower-Woman, Girls in Uniform, Furs, Men’s Fashion, A la Russe, Hats, and Hairstyles, presenting the main fashion trends of the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. Each section is accompanied by a text. These texts were written by Olga Khoroshilova, the famous fashion historian, Larisa Zaitseva, curator of the museum’s collection of photographs from the 19th to early 20th centuries, and Elvira Ramazanova, a mediator and one of the authors of the MAMM social networks.

Texts are an important constituent of this exhibition. Portraits of unknown male and female fashionistas, or famous ladies and gentlemen of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, spring to life like a magical movie show, thanks to the text. Apparently fashion accessories often significantly complicated a person’s life and everyday existence, for example, but for the sake of beauty no sacrifice can be made in vain.

It is no coincidence that this exhibition stands adjacent to the display ‘Collection of the Still Art Foundation. Masterpieces of World Fashion Photography’. Top photographers whose work coincided with the heyday of photo-illustrated glossy magazines, namely from the 1950s to 2000s, recorded the fashion of an entirely different epoch. In less than half a century, from the 1910s to the 1950s, fashion and style changed dramatically, as did life and society.

Fashion mirrors the era, but it may also create new social roles and new frameworks for social behaviour. Of course fashion, like any art form, develops from achievements of the past, while breaking old canons and stereotypes. Technological innovations also influence its development. Many inventions by fashion designers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, including elements of the style à la russe, or elements of uniform in 19th-century women’s clothing, became a source of inspiration for Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Dries van Noten, Viktor & Rolf, Alexander McQueen, etc.

The exhibition features many cabinet portraits from family archives. The characters in these photographs are not historical figures. A particular challenge for the museum’s preservation department was the detailed attribution of these images and a search for stories about the characters depicted.

The exhibition ‘Fashionistas of the 19th – Early 20th Century. From the MAMM Collection’ is a continuation of the museum’s strategic programme ‘The History of Russia in Photographs’.