Kvinnohistoria

"American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" på the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute.

Bilder och bra recension: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-05/forgotten-fashion-ancestors

Denna utställning - med "socialites you’ve probably never heard of like Rita Lydig, Mona Bismarck, and Consuelo Vanderbilt" - skulle man gärna vilja besöka.

Här, från the Daily Beast, en fantastisk genomgång av subkulturella uttryck hos amerikansk kvinnlig 1900-talsöverklass:

“All of these characteristics are part of American style,” explained Bolton, a dapper Brit in horn-rimmed glasses. They include the heiress who was most vividly depicted in Henry James’ novels and the robber-baron daughters who married European aristos and hung out in mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. Out of this pastoral idyll emerged the athletic and independent minded Gibson Girl (actually, she emerged from the pen and ink drawings in Life magazine of Charles Dana Gibson, the very well-connected artist who spent most of his time sketching ladies of leisure at play). Next up was the bohemian of the late 1890s who decided to take on a bit of intellectual baggage and begin thinking about more important issues like sexual and political freedom. They ditched their corsets and embraced the comfy caftans of Paul Poiret and the Callot Soeurs—the four Parisian sisters who stitched up exotic gowns in lace and lamé. As time went on, the American woman liberated herself not just from corsets but also from the shackles of a male-dominated society. This brings us to the flapper, the suffragette, and, finally, that über-American icon: the screen siren.