April Brings the Gardner Museum's First Ever Fashion Exhibit

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Bostonians seem to have developed a taste for fashion exhibits, a hunger that local museums are eager to feed. With a variety of recent shows at the Museum of Fine Arts (such as "Hippie Chic" and Mario Testino) and the Peabody Essex Museum ("Future Beauty" and "Hats"), there is clearly an audience for the genre, likely fueled by the area's tourist and student populations. Next week, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will join the ranks with its first ever fashion exhibit, "Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community," opening on April 17 and running through September 1.

The multimedia exhibit will highlight the work of Fernández, a designer preserving Mexico's indigenous textile heritage through contemporary design, utilizing her "Square Root" method to make clothing from squares and rectangles. The museum's website notes: "This process emphasizes forms of fabric and delicate, thoughtful construction based on whole fabric, as opposed to cutting in curves and molding to the body." Departing from the typical fashion exhibit format, the Gardner presentation will showcase photographs, live performance, and video in addition to garments and textiles.
· Museums Artfully Embrace Fashion Exhibits [Boston Globe]
· Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer [Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum]
· Carla Fernández [Official Site]