Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion, Curated by Amy de la Haye with Colleen Hill for the Museum at FIT, New York, The United States, August 6 – November 28, 2021, Tickets free

The exhibition Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion, curated by Amy de la Haye and Colleen Hill, looks at how roses, a perennial motif in fashion, influence how we dress, feel, and imagine. The exhibition explores the rose in the context of love, beauty, sexuality, sin, gender identity, transgression, degradation, and death, with over 130 artifacts ranging from the most opulent hand-woven and embroidered silks of the 18th century to the current gender-neutral catwalk trends (The Museum at FIT, 2021).

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The introductory gallery titled Rose Garden of Hats contains a variety of rose-themed hats from both famous fashion houses including Christian Dior, Lanvin, Balenciaga and Schiaparelli as well as unknown artisans and is a feast for hat lovers. Notably, the hats are exhibited atop “thorns”, which symbolize “pain, sin, and sorrow”, according to the descriptions. The hats themselves are flowers on thorns that vary in color and shape, just like real roses. Several hats are made in the shape of roses, and some are decorated with whole artificial roses or rose petals and leaves. A hat composed of leaves made of green silk and roses made of red silk, from De Pinna, dating back to 1955, looks like a real rose at first glance and shows the designer's extraordinary imagination inspired by roses. Another, from Mr. John dates to 1952 and is made of off-white silk and velvet. The dried and yellowed leaves are reminiscent of a fading rose – as shown in the main gallery roses are not always red and vivid. These hats also highlight how fashion trends vary throughout time, with hats from different eras having drastically diverse shapes.

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Next to the garden of hats, the curators displayed photographic portraits of people wearing real or artificial roses, through which they demonstrate how people use roses as photographic props, how roses interface with the dressed body and the symbolic connotations of wearing roses. Items in the first room provide a promising introduction to the main gallery. 

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Rose Garden of Fashion, the main gallery, was designed as a romantic rose garden, where more than 50 rose-patterned ensembles were arranged by color, as the colors of roses have different symbolic meanings. Soft violet walls – a hue “evoking dawn or dusk, times when roses are at their most fragrant” – with rose-shaped projections, each part separated by fences – like in a real garden, with music singing about roses in the background, this garden are about roses. 

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The first section The Red Rose: Crimson Joy is based on the theme of red roses, inspired by a line from William Blake's poem “Crimson Joy” from 1794, and includes ensembles from Dior, Valentino, Noir Kei Ninomiya, Alexander McQueen. The red rose has long been associated with love, passion and especially feminine, but the curators show us that roses were not always so. A blood-red ensemble with black hiding in the folds of the red tulles by Noir Kei Ninomiya, avoids the fragility associated with flowers and is with punkish undertone. A jacket designed by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen with roselike sleeve design juxtaposes male and female elements, shaping curves while emphasizing a broad shoulder silhouette.

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White and Pale Pink: Most Pure Roses, which is the title of the second section, is dedicated to white and pink roses, which were associated with virginity and purity. Thus, ensembles with white and pink rose ornamentation usually appeared in debutante parties and weddings. The “La Sylphide” gown designed by Charles James in 1937 and worn by Miss Esme O’Brien at the same year as her debutante dress, is embellished with artificial flowers on the chest. A man’s vest from the 1840s proves that roses are not exclusive to women, but can also be incorporated into masculine clothing. In fact, in ancient Rome, men with great deeds or virtues were awarded wreaths of roses, and it was not until the 19th century that flowers were given a feminine gender identity (De la Haye 2020).

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The third section, titled Black: The Transgressive Rose, is about the black rose that does not really exist in nature but is commonly used in design. Unlike the romance of red roses and the purity of white roses, black roses symbolize “fated love, tragedy, deathliness, and death”. The transgression of black roses can be found in the coat dress by Thom Browne, which avoids pastel colors and curves while applying applique lace roses and an exaggerated silhouette, demonstrating what Browne himself calls “female power” (Blanks 2013). In the past, fashionable and affluent women who love roses were often “personalized and idealized as roses” (De la Haye 2020). However, ensembles by Thom Browne and Alexander McQueen demonstrate that women can break free from stereotypes and objectified status and be empowered by different uses of roses. 

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Fashion designers draw upon roses to explore men’s fashion and gender-neutral designs in the final exhibition room, Mixed Bunch: Yellow, Blue, and Other Roses. In the two-piece ensemble by NIHL, the designer Neil Grotzinger explores ideas of “masculinity, queerness, power, and sensuality”, in which the symbolism of roses is further expanded. 

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The lighting in both the introductory gallery and main gallery is very dim, with just the right amount of light shining on the exhibits to best protect them without blurring the details. The curators employed a variety of mannequins to display the various costumes, with modern designs on commercial shop display mannequins and some 18th and 19th century costumes being on dress stands. The descriptions of the exhibits also follow the theme of roses, providing exactly enough information – including designers, purposes, materials, production time and place, sources, and brief descriptions – without damaging the visitor’s imagination. It is worth noticing that the curators have included on the label the rose perfume launched by the brand, as the rose’s aroma is a vital component of its identity. The ensembles are arranged by color, however the exhibits within each section do not appear to be in any particular order. 

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The use of roses in fashion, like fashion itself, serves to reveal the social, economic, and cultural relevance of a specific age or region, however this exhibition merely expresses the superficial symbolic meaning without delving further. The sweatshops and exploited labor that went into making these beautiful hats and ensembles are not mentioned. Furthermore, Asian, African, and other regional clothing are not included in the rose's symbolic meanings. Some of the designs are clearly inspired by non-Western traditional cultures, but these are not reflected in the labels, and the curators disregard the influence of other cultures in the use of roses in fashion. ▪︎

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