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A fashion exhibition looks at the most symbolically charged color.
By Kristi Cameron
The Metropolis Observed
March 2002
"Poets have talked about how there's something in red that warms the
blood and germinates the seed of original sin," says Valerie Steele,
one of the curators of Red, an exhibition that opened at New York's
Fashion Institute of Technology on Valentine's Day and runs through April
20. "It's a color that is a natural symbol, because blood and fire
really are red. Rubies and wine are red. By extension it has acquired amazing
metaphorical resonance. It is associated with life and passion but also
anger and lust." Though these associations are more or less universal,
they are interpreted differently in different cultures. In India and China,
for example, brides traditionally wear red as a symbol of fertility and
happiness. In the West, where red is thought sexy and sinful, brides wear
virginal white.
There are 100 items of clothing, accessories, and textiles from the past
five centuries in the show, including the dress Joan Crawford wore
in the 1937 film The Bride Wore Red, and a sofa and lamp shaped
like lips. One notable piece is an abstract evening dress (pictured) designed
by Rei Kawakubo, of Comme des Garçons, in 1991. "She was really
instrumental in making black the fashion color in the 1980s," Steele
says. "Then in the early 1990s she suddenly made this sort of cryptic
announcement, 'Red is black.' Not the banal, 'Red is the new black.' Nothing
stupid like that. But 'Red is black,' meaning red has the kind of power
and cachet that black has.'"
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