Fashion exhibitions are a dime a dozen these days—and that isn’t a bad thing. They prove that museums are opening up to the idea of fashion-focused shows (look no further than the recent opening of the Louvre’s first couture exhibition), which place clothing design and textile creation in their rightful spot as venerable art forms. Every once in a while, one exhibition cuts through the rest—and this time, the Museum at FIT’s latest show, “Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities” is most definitely holding the knife.
In “Fashioning Wonder,” curator Dr. Colleen Hill introduces a 21st-century audience to the idea of cabinets of curiosities. Hailing from the early 16th century, cabinets acted as the precursor to the modern museum, a place where travelers and collectors could display items including anatomical specimens, antiquities, and relics from across the globe.
Christian Dior leopard fur coat from the early 1960s against a 1655 engraving of Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities.
©The Museum at FIT
The exhibition begins with a depiction of a 1655 cabinet from Danish physician Ole Worm, in which a Greenlandic fish gut parka and shoes from Central Asia are seen alongside antlers and hunting tools. This idea of collecting is featured prominently in “Fashioning Wonder”; many designers are, after all, known to be magpies (take Karl Lagerfeld, for example, who notably collected iPods, 20th-century plates, and drawings by the French designer Jacques Heim, among other ephemera). In the show, there is a dress from Mary Katrantzou’s 2019 tenth-anniversary collection, through which she explored “amass[ing] like objects of a particular kind, to record, to study and identify, to protect and cherish.”
Designs featured in the “Illusions” cabinet, from left to right: dress by Mary Katrantzou, dress by Pucci, gown by Ralph Rucci, dress by Louis Féraud, union suit by Byron Lars, and dress by Christian Francis Roth.
©The Museum at FIT
From there, the exhibition explodes into a world of wonders. Two hundred garments and accessories illustrate 10 themes commonly found within cabinets. The show follows an open-concept design, allowing guests to wander and get lost among the items that range in provenance from 2024 all the way back to the 17th century.
Curator Hill tells W that she prefers to explore the galleries by starting with the sections she has titled “Illusions.” “I think it’s the most unknown type of collection in the cabinets,” she explains. While trompe l’oeil rules the runways right now, the trend is nothing new—it wasn’t uncommon to find examples of the artistic technique within cabinets of yore. “These collections were educational, but they were also meant to be fun,” Hill says. In her own cabinet creation, Hill brings forth a ’50s-era mini bag shaped like an umbrella, a pair of fall 2006 Lanvin boots that resemble nude legs wearing pumps, and a Pucci dress circa 1954 comprised of a silk printed to look like mink—a surprise in itself. “I actually wrote to the Pucci archive, and I was like, ‘Is this really yours?’ They confirmed it. You just don’t think of Pucci doing trompe-l’oeil, much less trompe-l’oeil mink.”
Comme des Garçons spring 2018 dress.
©The Museum at FIT
Another standout piece from “Fashioning Wonder,” which pulls almost entirely from FIT’s existing archive, is the Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons spring 2018 dress printed with Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus, a portrait of Emperor Rudolph II. “This is a really special object to me,” Hill says of the dress, because of its fantastical grandeur, but also the fact that the Emperor himself was a collector. “He had a huge collection of curiosities,” and the portrait was specifically commissioned for his own cabinet, she adds.
Next comes “The Senses,” a section that allows visitors to hear what some of these objects sound like in motion (in one case, guests can touch a recreation of a 1948 Molyneux dress, made in muslin by FIT graduate student Katherine Shark). “Aviary,” “Specimens,” and “Anatomical Theatre” provide examples of the most common form of cabinets of curiosities—taxidermy (or sometimes live) birds and animals and anatomical specimens presented during a time when the human body was still very much a mystery to scientists and doctors. Through archival pulls, Hill and her team have proven that centuries later, these themes still fascinate the public, from the grotesque vibe of a rib-adorned dress to the beauty of an intricately beaded Tom Ford design that turns the wearer into a human zebra.
Tom Ford fall 2013 dress.
©The Museum at FIT
“Fashioning Wonder” is a place for exploration. There is a lot of the familiar: a Jeff Koons for Louis Vuitton tote bag featuring the Mona Lisa and a Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons padded jersey top. But visitors will still have a chance to be introduced to the unknown. One section, aptly titled “What Is It?” presents various fashion objects with no context, allowing guests to make their own assumptions before revealing their true usage under covered title cards. But we wouldn’t dare give away any of the answers here and ruin the fun. Nor do we want to spoil any more of the surprises that await in MFIT and Hill’s cabinet.
Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities is on display at the Museum at FIT from February 19, 2025–April 20, 2025.
