Victoria Pevzner ‘24, Arts and Entertainment Staff Writer

Fashion is an important art form where a designer can express their ideas and emotions through clothing, similar to how a painter could express ideas through paintings. Fashion is a platform that conveys many themes and ideas, but one of the most interesting ones to look at is freedom — a broad topic that can be interpreted in many different ways. 

I recently went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see its newest exhibit, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.” This exhibit includes a collection of pieces by American designers, such as Vera Wong, Michael Kors, Yeohlee Teng, and many more. The central theme tying together all of the pieces in the exhibit is American Identity or Culture. The concept of freedom plays a large role in the American identity, so it was incorporated in many of the designs. The first piece that caught my eye was a beautiful sari by Prabal Gurung, an artist born in Singapore who eventually immigrated to America. The garment itself is composed of white cotton poplin which is trimmed with synthetic flowers. Wrapped around the garment is a sash that reads, “Who gets to be American?” This sari was part of Gurung’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection, which had designs that combined traditional Eastern attire with American sportswear, representing the two cultures that had an impact on Gurung’s life. The phrase “Who gets to be American?” reflects Gurung’s personal experience as an immigrant and mirrors the experiences of many others in the process of immigration and citizenship.

Freedom can also be expressed in fashion through the concept of ethics. Connor Ives, who is currently based in London but was born in America, created a design to represent a working girl. Ives created the piece from a military blanket that he painted himself. The piece was part of Ives’ collection “American Dream.” The abstract nature of this piece has resulted in differing interpretations of its meaning. The military blanket, for example, could be seen as symbolic of the harsh conditions that were ever-present in the lives of the Lowell “Mill Girls” in the 1830s. Ives also said that the sun, painted on the front of the piece, was a setting one and not a rising one, which in the case of intensive labor signifies the end of a workday. This piece also questions the idea of freedom because, on one hand, the women who worked in the factories felt independence as they provided for themselves and weren’t reliant on anyone. On the other hand, the conditions in the workplace were so harsh that they began to signify torture rather than freedom.

Other designers, including Paul Poiret and Iris Van Herpen, have their own takes on freedom as well. Paul Poiret lived from 1879 to 1944 and was one of the most influential designers in the era of stylistic modernism. Rather than exploring freedom through the lens of American identity, he explored it more through its literal meaning. His goal was to create clothing for women that weren’t restricting, contrasting traditional corsets that are extremely uncomfortable. His notable process of draping textiles rather than tailoring them set an important precedent for stylistic modernism, and allowed women to feel free while wearing clothes.

Iris Van Herpen saw freedom as a representation of movement when creating her Earthrise collection. Van Herpen is known for her contemporary style and futuristic designs, and one of her most famous designs was created in collaboration with skydiver Domitille Kiger. In this collaboration, Kiger wore a couture dress while skydiving. The stunning dress is composed of different shades of blue, the color used to symbolize freedom. In addition to Kiger’s movement through the air, Van Herpen added to the theme by using tech fabrics to engineer the dress so that it had details that were constantly moving on the dress itself.

Overall, different themes can be expanded upon and interpreted in so many different ways based on the artist’s personal life experiences. Gurung’s experience with immigration, for example, inspired fashion that challenges the topic of citizenship. Connor Ives on the other hand began to incorporate American Identity and freedom into his designs when he moved to work in London because he missed the US and its culture. For him, it was a way to manage his homesickness. Although these are separate ideas, they are just different ways of expressing the overarching theme of freedom.