RISD museum to exhibit Men's fashion from Apr 28

Organized thematically, gallery sections include a four-part introduction: “Beau Brummell” illustrates the style of this forbearer of “man at his best”; “Sketches and Definitions” introduces the often contradictory definitions and images of the clothes-wearing man; “Crafting the Dandy” addresses the workmanship and detail that makes up an aggressively individual style of male fashion; and “Relics” brings together garments and accessories that epitomize certain iconic dandies.

A final section, “An Original,” transitions the viewer from the introductory categories to the main themes, tying together craftsmanship and the evocative object with a focus on Richard Merkin, whose influential style was an inspiration for the exhibition.

While the exhibition stresses the many ways in which the dandy eludes exacting definition, five themes offer a framework for viewers to explore the individual personalities, suggesting kinship across chronological and geographic borders: Historians, Connoisseurs, Revolutionaries, Romantics, and Explorers.

Such figures as Thom Browne, founder and head of design for American fashion label Thom Browne; Waris Ahluwalia, jewelry designer, actor, and columnist for Style.com; W. E. B. Du Bois, noted scholar, editor, and African American activist; Stephen Tennant, author and member of the “Bright Young People” social set, and Motofumi “Poggy” Kogi, director of the Japanese label United Arrows & Sons, buyer for United Arrows, and previously of the fashion label Liquor, Woman & Tears, embody these themes respectively.

The exhibition acknowledges these classifications as fluid and porous and the individuals as capable of spanning several, perhaps even all, categories. Just as they are all simultaneously artists, rebels, and dandies, the figures represented in Artist/Rebel/Dandy are historians, connoisseurs, revolutionaries, romantics, and explorers—each living his productive and creative life in pleasure and enjoyment of his clothing.

“Connecting the actual garments of the creative men who wore them with portrayals of the dandy throughout history offers the viewer fresh insights into the power of fashion and textiles as a male pursuit,” say curators Irvin and Brewer. “This line of inquiry not only brings to light collections of the RISD Museum and other institutions, but it also presents clothing as expressions of individual personality and as art,” adds Museum Director Smith.

Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design