The Fashion of the “American Woman” is Exhibited

Fifty years of the American woman in fashion.     

A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum's 2010 Costume Exhibit in New York examines five decades of female attire in the U.S., and how femininity, style, social, sexual and economic emancipation are reflected in clothes.  

Titled "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity," the exhibit contains period clothing from the 1890s through to the 1940s.   

Curator Andrew Bolton said many of the items on display came from The Brooklyn Museum's costume collection. 

[Andrew Bolton, Curator of the Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art]:  
"So many pieces that you see here haven't been on display for about 30 years, so to actually have access to the sort of rich diversity of the costume collection at Brooklyn was just a dream come true, it was amazing." 

The exhibit shows how the American woman has evolved from European, Old World ideas of elegance into an independent sensibility that is typical of the freedoms of today.

[Andrew Bolton, Curator of the Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art]:  
"As you go through the exhibition, we are trying to look both at the sartorial changes from the 1890s through to the 1940s which is the end of the exhibition. But also the gradual emancipation of the American woman through her gradual engagement in public life."        

Designers ranging from Jeanne Lanvin, to Chanel, to Charles Frederik Worth are part of the exhibit, which runs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until August.