A few months ago Rashidah and I decided to see the Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible conversations exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you have not seen it as of yet; it’s absolutely worth a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to check it out.
The Exhibit which was inspired by Miguel Covarrubias’s “Impossible Interviews” for Vanity Fair in 1930; starts off with an interesting video of Elsa Schiaparelli (played by actress Judy David with quotes taken from Schiaparelli’s autobiography: Shocking Life ) and Miucci Prada having a simulated conversation about their troublesome childhoods growing up in Italy and how difficult it was to be a women and a startup fashion designer in their prospective eras. Their conversation ends with ” It’s not just the fashion…but maybe it’s the way we live, cause in the end we have many similarities, yes many similarities.” And throughout the exhibit you can definitely see the similarities in their designs.
This exhibit displays over 100 designs by Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and by Prada from the late 1980s to the present. The galleries are broken down into seven themes “Waist Up/Waist Down,” “Ugly Chic,” “Hard Chic,” “Naïf Chic,” “The Classical Body,” “The Exotic Body,” and “The Surreal Body.”
The Classical Body
Hard Chic
Naif Chic
Ugly Chic
Rashidah and I enjoyed this exhibit from start to finish and the best part is that you don’t have to worry about headphones for the audio because they have built in over head audio.
**There weren’t any lines when we went, but we decided to go about a month after the exhibit opened and it ends on August 19, 2012; so there may be some crowds.
All photos taken from Metmuseum.org
Rashidah and Janet at MET Museum
Janet and Rashidah at MET Museum
Source: Janet Lawrence
