Hello, dear readers —
I spent the last few days in New York City, celebrating a friend’s literary debut, visiting my grandmother, and popping into world class museums because I had a few spare hours, which is something you can do in New York that you can’t really do in Iowa. (Dorothea Lange at MoMA? Sure! Native American art at the Met? Yes please!)
The one exhibit I’d actually planned to go to was “Ballerina: Fashion’s Modern Muse” at the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). It’s an in-depth look at how ballet costumes evolved, and how they’ve influenced couture and pret-a-porter fashion for decades, from Coco Chanel borrowing tutu shapes to crossover tops becoming streetwear in the 1970s (did I wander into the Capezio flagship store a few days later and consider buying a crossover so that I can write this book in a warm and very flattering top? Yes, yes I did).
The exhibit begins in the early 20th century, when ballet had already started to become respectable after a century of association with the sordid demimonde, in which moneyed patrons went to the theatre not to appreciate the artform but to watch the impoverished dancing girls in hopes of — depending on who you ask — protecting or preying on them.
“For centuries,” the exhibit’s opening note says, “ballerinas were relegated to the margins of society and had little impact on other creative fields such as fashion. Although ballet consistently reflected the latest modes, fashion rarely borrowed elements from classical dance costumes.
But in the 1930s, “this one-sided relationship changed. Thanks to the tremendous impact of early modern Russian dancers, a widespread and enduring craze for ballet, or ‘balletomania,’ took hold in the west, particularly in Great Britain and America. Ballet ascended into their pantheons of modern high culture and influenced other creative disciplines.”
It wasn’t just ballet’s growing cultural cache that ensured it a place in the fashion lexicon, though. It was also a matter of geopolitics, and money. Take the ballet flat, for example, the now-ubiquitous style staple in the American wardrobe. “It first appeared in New York during World War II because dance shoes were exempt from stringent wartime restrictions that made acquiring footwear difficult,” the exhibit explains. In 1942, the designer Claire McCardell, the grandmother of our modern athleisure obsession, paired her designs with real Capezio ballet slippers, and then worked with the dancewear manufacturer to design a more street-sturdy shoe.
In other words, ballet flats are the carrot cake of footwear: a wartime make-do that people liked enough to keep around after the war. But carrot cake has never left me with massive, un-Bandaid-able blisters at the backs of my feet.
If you’re in New York City or nearby, the exhibit is worth your time. There are plenty of pieces in there that live in museums in the UK (the Victoria and Albert, mostly), so this is a rare chance to see them. If you can’t make it to the exhibit, you might consider buying or borrowing the accompanying book. And no, I did not get the crossover, but if you’re in the market, this one is very, very soft.
Speaking of dance and fashion, I can’t stop hate-following the Instagram account @modelsdoingballet, which shows you what happens when fashion borrows from ballet but doesn’t respect it all that much. If you can’t stand unpointed feet or sickled ankles, or people who’ve been strapped into a pair of pointe shoes by some creative director who doesn’t know what they’re doing, this account is not for you. “Just stop,” the account’s bio reads. “Hire dancers.”
I’m back in Iowa now, and tomorrow I head back into the Book Cave, back to living life 800 words at a time. See you all next week, and thanks for reading.