‘Women Fashion Power’ at the Design Museum: Val Gloomy «

‘Women Fashion Power’ at the Design Museum: Val Gloomy

Monday 10th November 2014

Val was shattered on a bench. A huge yacht, Kismet, was moored in the Thames, right outside the Museum, but Val was having one of his cigarettes. This is no ordinary smoking, you understand, but a tragic tornado beside which Medea chopping up her children or Oedipus with his eyes out are as nothing. We were there for ‘Women Fashion Power’, an exhib at the Design Museum about how powerful women dress. It started with a picture of Eve, wearing nothing at all, but quickly progressed to Queen Victoria. ‘She was more like a piece of furniture,’ I said, thinking what fun it would have been to pin all sorts of different and random bits of fabric to her immoveable form according to mood or whim. ‘Yes, a sofa,’ Val said, recalling his advice to a great actress playing Queen Victoria many years ago. Then Val bucked up a bit because ‘paletot’ was spelt wrong on one of the labels. There were examples of rational dress, early cycling and bathing outfits, followed by the looser look in the 1920s, shorter skirts, ankles etc. The familiar story. We enjoyed the Marks and Spencer blouses from the 2nd World War. When it came to the modern times, thrilling to find so many pieces belonging to people we know. There was a Roland Mouret dress: Cousin Barley’s wedding dress was made for her privately by Roland Mouret. Zaha Hadid’s cream Prada wrap – well, we know her in several ways, most importantly through Bruce MacBain of course. Val was very impressed (rare for him) by Kazudout’s black beaded frock for Diana. He’s known also, rather too well. Tremendous gasps to be actually before one of Margaret’s suits by Mansfield, a horror exactly the shade of an unnatural green blancmange we had a school with orange and brown facings (the suit not the blancmange). But Val by this time was slumped at the side, shattered. ‘It’s all rather random,’ he was saying, if he could speak at all. I did agree. Sam Cam’s cotton frock from M and S was all very well but is she a powerful woman? She’s the wife of the PM. Ditto, Mrs Clegg. What’s more the red Zara dress of hers on display wasn’t the same as the one she was wearing in the photo. As for dear darling Princess Charlene of Monaco… lovely grey ball gown. So three women who are essentially wives. Otherwise you were looking at some quite nice frockage belonging to an unknown female CEOs of companies one had never heard of. No clear picture emerged. Nevertheless Val was ecstatic about a pair of shoes and also a gymnastic outfit his mother might have worn in the 1930s, when she was in the Daughters of the Empire (I think that was the name) and they mounted mass gymnastics in Hyde Park and elsewhere.