Peter McNeil: Libertine Acts: Fashion and Furniture: “that’s all they did in the eighteenth century”
University of Technology Sydney
In 2004-6 the Metropolitan Museum of Art staged two very different major exhibitions of costume which attempted a new experience in the public gallery. Dangerous Liaisons. Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century and Anglomania, the latter held one year later, inter-wove fashion, furniture and period rooms to create a highly charged theatrical event for the viewing public. This paper considers the different concepts of historical time played out in each exhibition, and their different relationship between a historical tradition and the contemporary fashion market-place. Both exhibitions opened up many questions that might be fruitfully explored: do developments in the history of furniture – the creation of new furniture forms such as the bureau plat, the commode and the multiplication of seating types – parallel developments in the history of clothing styles? Is furniture in fact more inventive in this period than costume in propelling the body in new directions? What is the relationship of fashion, body, artefact and space? The paper concludes with consideration of the relationship between historical fashion, museology, display, theatricality and the contemporary marketing of fashion in the 21st century.