Unframed: The opportunity to enhance LACMA’s permanent collection has often been a consideration when curators organize an exhibition, and the upcoming special exhibition Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015 inspired us to forge a strategy to fully develop the museum’s permanent collection of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century menswear. Five years ago, when we began planning for this 300-year survey of men’s fashion, an authentic zoot suit was at the top of our list.
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These are my kind of people.
We can talk all day about making authentic costumes, the look of the period, the tell-tale characteristics associated with clothing of a certain decade. But to obtain the real tangible thing which we seek to preserve through imitation - that is a true art. No matter how hard we squint at black and white photographs and how carefully we generate our patterns, to have the clothing itself and to experience it as a living, breathing garment with stories to tell and a life of its own is an invaluable thing. I'm sure many of the people who worked on this project received funny looks when they told their friends they were spending so much time tracking down an authentic zoot-suit. It's not exactly something you hear every day. They didn't do it for people to say "wow, cool!" They did it to know the truth of the thing, and to honor its place in a culture which it helped to create. I never pass by a 99 cent vintage hat in Goodwill, and this is why. I have found a method for meeting history face to face. And I am more than excited to download that pattern when it becomes available.
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