Positively Jamesian

By Troy Segal

A glimpse into the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Charles James: Beyond Fashion exhibit — and a post-show follow-up.

Only a few more weeks remain to catch the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Charles James: Beyond Fashion exhibit, which runs through Aug. 10. The show’s a go-to not only for fashion fans, but for anyone who wants a sense of how the other half lived — and dressed — in mid-20th-century America.

James (1906-1978) was a couturier — America’s first true couturier, some say — who made custom clothes for the crème de la crème of well-to-do women. And, while his career spanned four decades, its heyday was really the post-World War II era, that final flowering of High Society.

Left: Evening Dress, 1946. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection; right: “Clover Leaf” Evening Dress, 1953. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

James is best known for his ball gowns from that period, and a large, special gallery on the Met’s main floor allows these sculptural creations plenty of space to be seen from all angles; almost every dress also has a camera zigzagging around it, displaying views from within and computerized breakdowns of its construction. Intricate marvels of tailoring, they are stiff —seemingly able to stand up by themselves — yet surprisingly sensual, outlining and emphasizing the female silhouette, not to mention certain parts of the female anatomy, with their drapes, swags, and folds of fabric.

Charles James Ball Gowns, 1948. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph by Cecil Beaton, Beaton / Vogue / Condé Nast Archive. Copyright © Condé Nast

Many seem like a modern, streamlined take on Victorian hoopskirts and bustles. Small wonder that a famous 1948 photograph, by Cecil Beaton for Vogue, of eight models in poufy James dresses chatting and primping in an elaborate lounge, resembles one of those colorfully drawn 19th-century fashion plates depicting “Modes for Evening.”

The other half of Charles James: Beyond Fashion — the show is divided, somewhat awkwardly, into two parts, located in opposite sections of the museum — unfolds in the Met’s subterranean Anna Wintour Costume Center. Decorated with Jamesian quotes on the walls (e.g., “All my seams have meaning”), it displays daytime dresses, coats and (comparatively) more casual cocktail outfits; a hat or two (James began as a milliner); and a room of photos, clippings, and other memorabilia documenting the designer’s career, much of it donated by Homer Layne, his assistant for several years.

On Sept. 18 — in a kind of postscript to the exhibit — Layne is appearing at the Museum at FIT. After chatting with a professor for fashion design, he will demonstrate the famously intricate draping technique that gave James’ dresses their libidinous lines.