Rara Avis: The Metropolitan Museum Showcases One Woman's Singular Style
By Lauren David Peden
Fashion Wire Daily - New York - From the moment a visitor walks down the steps to the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute's latest exhibit, "Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection" - where you are greeted by the site of a bald, bespectacled mannequin floating on the wall, decked out in a fanciful Norman Norell coat of multicolor silk flower petals from 1962 atop fuschia suede over-the-knee Kenzo boots from 1990 - one is immediately struck with a wondrous and welcome "Toto, we're not in Kansas, anymore" sensation. Wondrous because it's the first time the Met has ever devoted an entire exhibit to the collection of a single fashion-loving civilian (as opposed to a designer) and Apfel's uniquely over-the-top-yet-wearable style sensibility more than lives up to the honor bestowed upon her and her wardrobe.Welcome because after several seasons of pretty, if toothless, ladylike dressing (floaty chiffon tops, girlie print dresses, ‘50s redux silhouettes), the fashion world's current obsession with black in all its Victorian Goth glory, and next spring's minimalist beige and greige offerings, it's wholly refreshing to be confronted by Apfel's extremely personal and extremely idiosyncratic everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sartorial aesthetic, wherein she manages to mix such unlikely elements as, say, Dolce & Gabbana lizard pants with a 19th century ecclesiastical vestment or Dior haute couture with a Zuni belt, yet always errs on the side of good taste - and always stays true to her own vision.In short, the exhibit is a visual reminder of the difference between fashion and style: One hews to commercial, seasonal (and now celebrity) trends, the other hews to an individual's personal taste and their ability to disseminate and incorporate a season's current look into their own particular aesthetic (or not), trends be damned - and it serves as a much-needed slap in the face to the bottom-line-driven fashion industry and the supposedly stylish trendsetters who march, lemming-like, to the drumbeat of the latest Miuccia/Marc/Balenciaga bag/Mukluk boot hit parade.In the World of Iris Barrel Apfel, it doesn't matter if something is "in" or "out" and it doesn't matter if it cost $5 or $50,000. If she likes it, she wears it. That might not sound like such a groundbreaking idea in these mix-and-match times, but considering that Ms. Apfel is now 84 years young and has been dressing this way for most of her adult life, we're talking about a woman who was way (way) ahead of her time."Iris has a very good eye and what's interesting with her is that she always goes for the high and low," Stéphane Houy-Towner, research associate at the Costume Institute and co-curator of "Rara Avis" told FWD recently while conducting a private tour of the exhibit. "Everything was selected for what I would consider visual or aesthetic gratification. Provenance is not something she's interested in. If it looks decent and it makes her happy, she picks it up."Apfel, a native New Yorker, began picking up things that made her happy in the 1930s at the tender age of 14 and starting wearing jeans a few years later when she went away to college in chilly Wisconsin (no one was even making women's jeans back then so she bought men's denim and had them tailored to fit). She really came into her own, fashion-wise, when she moved back to New York post-graduation, became an interior designer, and founded the textile company Old World Weavers in the mid-1950s with her husband, Carl Apfel, and the two began traveling the globe in search of unusual textiles and textile manufacturers, which, naturally, led to some unusual fashion and accessory finds, too - many of them on display at the Met's paean to all things Iris.But what makes Apfel such a true style maven and, yes, a rare bird in the world of fashion, is not what she wore so much as how she wore it. Apfel was a natural-born stylist with a knack for mixing colors, textures, eras, designers and materials in fresh and unlikely ways - an innate skill further honed, one imagines, by her career in textile and interior design.Who else would think to pair a bright orange Geoffrey Beene jumpsuit and matching orange Emanuel Ungaro shoes with a Native American turquoise and silver belt and ginormous brooch in the shape of a scorpion, all offset by faux turquoise Italian cuff bracelets? And when was the last time you saw someone sporting a crocodile-embossed black patent leather mink-trimmed ensemble with mustard suede Philippe Model shoes accessorized with a black leather-and-faux-horn curtain tieback worn as a necklace? (What, you mean you don't use your Tibetan fishing basket as an evening bag and never thought to transform vintage camera flashbulbs into earrings, turn coconuts into bracelets or have your shoemaker whip up some boots with leftover upholstery fabric?)In fact, while Houy-Towner and Costume Institute curator Harold Koda chose all the clothing and accessories included in the show, they asked Apfel herself to do the actual styling, so everything in the exhibit is presented as she wore it, at least once.Apfel herself rejects the term "collector," as she buys things to use them - true fashion collectors often don't wear their purchases for fear of devaluing their investement - and she enjoys getting multiple "looks" from her wardrobe. She might pair her chevron-striped purple, pink and fuschia metallic leather Moschino "hooker" pants, as she jokingly calls them, with Ungaro's fluffy multicolored tulle ribbon evening coat to tart them up, and later wear the same pants with a chocolate cashmere turtleneck and matching suede boots for a more sophisticated effect.Apfel's style is what Houy-Towner calls "contained Baroque.""She is able to tame a very Baroque and excessive and colorful aesthetic," he explained while walking us through the exhibit, which is organized into five galleries. "And she has one of the most amazing color senses I've seen in a long time. She really understands tonalities so she's [able to] put together colors that don't really make sense but the way she mixes them, everything completely works."The show opens with The Défilé, a staged runway show, and the very apropos Edna Woolman Chase quote "Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess" and Oscar Wilde's edict: "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art."Everything that follows is a visual testament to this sentiment, from the many cases devoted to Apfel's sizable accessories collection (which range from an Armani dragonfly brooch picked up at Woodbury Commons to Bhutanese bangles to kitschy plastic flea market finds) to countless haute couture garments - Lanvin evening gowns, Chado Ralph Rucci ensembles, Christian Dior fur jackets - with outfits that range from outrageous to sublime. ("Zen simple or madly Baroque," is how Apfel describes her seemingly bipolar style, which goes from outré to soigné but is never in between.)Gallery Two, The Souk, opens with an Andy Warhol quote ("Everybody must have a fantasy") and showcases some of Apfel's more exotic treasures from her globe-trotting days. Gallery Three, The Soiree, focuses on evening ensembles and Gallery Four, The Arctic, is devoted to outfits inspired by her cold climate finds from Nepal, the Pacific Northwest and Mongolia with more fur than you'll see at the Central Park Zoo.The fifth and final gallery, The Circus, shows off Apfel's fashion high wire balancing act to great effect vis-à-vis unlikely pairings such as a Chinese Qing Dynasty yellow damask embroidered skirt worn with Italian peach leather boots and a rose angora twin set from Britain topped by a Mandarin carnelian and jade necklace that grazes the mannequin's ankles."What's really fascinating about that look is that it's not costumey," said Houy-Towner with obvious admiration for the woman he has come to adore. "She was able to make it fashion."Indeed, Apfel’s ability to take disparate elements from around the world (and from different time periods) and put them together so that the sum is greater--and more transcendent--than the parts is what makes the woman (and the show devoted to her style) so unique. And despite the fact that it opened with very little fanfare during New York Fashion Week in September (when the industry was too busy covering the shows to pay much notice), "Rara Avis" has since been visited by some of fashion's heaviest hitter - including designers Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani, Sylvia Fendi, Anna Sui, Ralph Lauren, Koos van der Akker, Lars Nilsson, Michael Vollbracht, Hervé Pierre Braillard, along with buyers from all the major stores and editors from every magazine - the latter of which led to a New York Times story speculating that this showcase of Apfel's uniquely singular style may pave the way for a fashion industry uprising in which personal taste once again trumps trends, at least in the short term, and inspire designers to new creative flights of fancy.If nothing else, "Rara Avis" will certainly inspire you to look at everything around you in a whole new multi-purposing light: Hmmm, is that a saucepan or a medallian-in-the-making? Why don'tI wear my 5-year-old daughter's belt as a hair band? Who says a skirt can’t be made from old subway tokens? Why can't those shower curtain rings be repurposed a necklace?So the next time you find yourself standing in front of your closet with the old "I've got nothing to wear" blues, don’t despair. Just look around the room and ask yourself: What Would Iris Do? The possibilities, it seems, are endless.
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