Made for ‘Ugh,’ Appropriated for ‘Oooh’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/arts/design/punk-chaos-to-couture-at-the-metropolitan-museum.html

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Punk didn’t play nice. Whether in music or attire, it wanted to provoke and offend, disrupt and incite. Good manners, good taste and marketable skills were considered the kiss of death.

Sideburns magazine outlined the musical approach in 1976: “This is a chord, this another, this is a third. Now form a band.” Vivienne Westwood, the British fashion designer who, with her partner the impresario Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010), did more than anyone to create the obstreperous punk look, said, “The best way to confront British society was to be as obscene as possible.” 

You’ll read these phrases on the walls or hear them piped into the galleries of “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” the latest spectacle from the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show is the ultimate confirmation that, despite attempts to be as unpalatable as possible, punk was absorbed by the culture around it, not least by blue-chip fashion designers on the prowl for new ideas. At once trashy and sexy, punk provided excellent slumming opportunities, which this exhibition shows to good effect amid wide-screens flashing images of Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten and the Clash in performance. But fashion has rarely looked as frivolous, beside the point and 1 percent-ish as here.

McLaren and Ms. Westwood themselves borrowed from bondage clothing, parachute jumpsuits and kilts — anything, it seemed, with straps and buckles. Their brand of punk wasn’t cheap, although this show demonstrates that they also excelled at unsettling or politically charged T-shirts. For punks in the street, the style was motivated as much by poverty as by rebellion and was distinguished by all kinds of DIY customization: cutting, lettering and safety-pinning, often evoking the anger of Dada, the French Situationists and even early Conceptual art, while foreshadowing postmodern deconstruction.

The basic uniform of punk’s prime years, the late ’70s, consisted of ripped jeans, studded leather jackets, T-shirts or dress shirts with some combination of holes, rude wording, pornographic images or bloodlike splatters of paint. Black rubber was big; so were chains and mohair sweaters, reminiscent of the 1950s, but bedraggled. Dresses could be made of anything, including garbage or dry-cleaning bags, with tape.

Most of these elements can be found, tamed and prettified, in “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” Too many of the garments look like coy novelty items, designs that were sent down the runway to startle fashionistas with money to burn, never to be seen again except in shows like this. For example, would anyone buy a classic Chanel suit full of tiny holes like cigarette burns if she didn’t already own several intact ones? A Moschino full-skirted dress made of shopping bags is a delightful party gag, one that, fittingly, evokes Marie Antoinette in shepherdess drag. The last garment in the show is by Martin Margiela and identified on the label as an evening dress. But really, it’s a skimpy shawl with an elastic harness, covering little of its mannequin, which is appropriately giving the middle-finger salute. The faulty assumption here seems to be that the more functionless clothes are, the more like art they become.

“Punk: Chaos to Couture” is not nearly on a par with the Met’s Alexander McQueen extravaganza of 2011. It is possible that no fashion exhibition ever will be. But it is much better than last year’s thematically challenged debacle, “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations,” in which numerous plexiglass vitrines and multiple DVD projections created a dizzying cacophony of reflections and sound, especially when the galleries were crowded.

With “Punk,” Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute and organizer of “Schiaparelli and Prada,” presents his ideas in a clear, orderly manner. This clarity sometimes simplifies things, giving punk credit for innovations that were already in the subcultural air in the 1960s and early ’70s. For example, hippies, whom the punks disdained, customized their Army-Navy surplus clothes and also used T-shirts for political statements. With around 60 of the show’s 95 ensembles dating from 2006 or later, the recent signs of punk’s influence are much more prominent than its history. If that history were the point, a 1981 or ’82 Comme des Garçons black, punk-inspired sweater dress, with conspicuous holes, would be displayed instead of a similar Calvin Klein design from 2007.

Nonetheless, the installation establishes a clear stylistic narrative. It begins with a titillating re-creation of the graffiti-scarred unisex restroom at CBGB, the seedy Bowery club where the Ramones, among the earliest of American punk bands, got their start. (The tableau is based on a late-1970s photograph reproduced in the catalog.)

In the first gallery, where the walls are lined with sheets of black rubber, vintage McLaren-Westwood garments from the late 1970s are paired with similar efforts by later designers, like Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, and Christopher Bailey for Burberry. Rodarte parlays mohair into a dress so loosely knit as to be virtually see-through (and with matching briefs.) Balmain takes studs on a short leather skirt to such excessive, opulent extremes that its punk counterpart looks positively restrained. To one side is a re-creation of McLaren and Ms. Westwood’s King’s Road shop in London, named Seditionaries during its punk incarnation; one wall is covered with a dour blowup of the ruins of post-World War II Dresden, Germany.

The remaining four galleries are divided according to do-it-yourself processes or materials. The all-white “DIY: Hardware” gallery mostly features black or white evening gowns set on high pedestals in rounded Classical niches. Zandra Rhodes, one of the first designers to borrow from the punks, is represented by two slinky 1977 evening gowns replete with holes, beaded safety pins and metal-ball chains.

But the most interesting punk touches don’t scream punk. Viktor & Rolf concocted an extraordinary fitted evening gown whose tiered, wrapped form is held in place by a spiral of big brass staples. Opposite, a more routine black dress from Moschino seems embroidered with silver starbursts made of safety pins.

The next gallery, “DIY: Bricolage,” could have been titled “Garbage” (and may have been until the curatorial overseers weighed in). White cast reliefs of discarded bottles and trash cover the walls, and garbage bags are often the fabric of choice. Gareth Pugh uses folded strips of them in topiarylike evening gowns that recall 18th-century court gowns. McQueen found black synthetic fabrics that imitate plastic and bubble wrapping for three suave ensembles, although the more you look at them, the more refined and less like garbage bags they seem. And Mr. Margiela, one of the show’s stars, makes jackets and vests from broken plates, Paris Métro posters, strands of imitation pearls and multicolored strips of newsprint covered with clear tape.

In “DIY: Graffiti and Agitprop,” where the setting conjures a decaying movie theater painted black, the show goes briefly haywire. A graffiti-patterned dress (1984) by Stephen Sprouse overlooks big, puffy ball gowns by Dolce & Gabbana (2008), whose colorful, brush-stroked fabric seems more Abstract Expressionist than anything else. Ms. Westwood is represented here by one of the show’s few ensembles that seems truly wearable. From 2006, it includes a big-pocketed skirt of striped silk; a T-shirt that says, “I am not a terrorist, please don’t arrest me”; and a short brown jacket.

The final gallery is “DIY: Destroy,” in which rips, slashes, holes and dismembered or hybrid garments dominate, and deconstruction is the subtext. A charming mini-dress from 2000 by Miguel Adrover, known for redesigning salvaged garments, may be the punkiest postpunk garment in the whole show. It consists of an old “I ♥ New York” T-shirt to which he added little poofs of ruffled sleeves.

Much else tends toward hyper-refinement. The Chanel suit is here, its holes sewn with invisible netting so that their raw edges won’t unravel.  So are jeans by Yves Saint Laurent and Balmain with careful rips accented by multiple strands of delicate chains; the Balmain jeans are shown with a sweater that has holes, but in an overlay of silver metal mesh. And marching down the center are eight of Comme des Garçons’ bulkier, more impossible ensembles, elegant monstrosities that only a performance artist could love, or use.

It’s too bad this exhibition could not have taken a broader view and examined punk’s considerable effect on clothes that people actually wear. But it is easier to concentrate on garments that startle or amuse while being clearly beyond the reach of everyday usefulness and budgets. Not for nothing do they call it the <em>Costume</em> Institute.

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>“Punk: Chaos to Couture” continues through Aug. 14 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org.