ABSTRACT
In the years 2004 through 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art staged two major sequential exhibitions of costumes which attempted a new experience in the public gallery. Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century and AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion interwove fashion, furniture, and period rooms to create a highly charged theatrical event for the viewing public. This chapter considers the different concepts of time played out in each exhibition, and the interdependency between a historical tradition and the contemporary fashion marketplace. Both exhibitions opened up many questions that might be fruitfully explored. What is the affinity between fashion, body, artifact, and space? Do developments in the history of furniture parallel developments in the history of clothing styles? Is furniture in fact more inventive in this period than costume in propelling the body in new directions? The chapter concludes with a consideration of the relationship between historical fashion, museology, display, theatricality, and the contemporary marketing of fashion in the twenty-first century.
