DESHABILLE CHIC.(exhibition of women's fashions, past and present, Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, New York )

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 18-NOV-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Patrons of couture generally fall into two categories: wives (or ex-wives) and their husbands' other women. There is a show for each at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology and, rather like marriage and adultery, they offer a choice between the prix fixe and the tasting menu. The basement galleries are devoted to a retrospective of Arnold Scaasi's five decades in fashion. Scaasi is a sort of American Hartnell. Some of his clients ride in motorcades wearing matching coat-and-dress ensembles in floral brocade. Since they do a lot of waving and smiling on behalf of their spouses, they require clothes that are splashy yet irreproachable. Scaasi also specializes in gala party dresses that awaken one's childish gourmandise like the dessert buffet at a big Jewish wedding. Several such dresses in the show are of tulle, in riotous Easter-egg pastels, with frothy appliques that look like a swarm of butterflies or the air bubbles in a milkshake. There is no hauteur in Scaasi's rather Southern (Houstonian or Washingtonian) notion of glamour, which in a way is endearing. And not all the work is fussy: his lines are often boldly graphic. But something in the tone, perhaps a slightly forced, therapeutic cheerfulness, reminds me of Dr. Ruth Westheimer's superannuated giggle, and her insistence that old married couples can still--indeed, should feel obliged to--have wholesome fun in bed.

The French believe that one should seek unwholesome fun in any bed but one's own, and seduction is the theme of "Femme Fatale: Fashion and Visual Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Paris," a small, dreamy installation on F.I.T.'s main floor. It is curated by Valerie Steele, whose literate notes on...

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