I want to see Diane Von Furstenberg’s JOURNEY OF A DRESS exhibition at LACMA, because it takes me right
back to Cincinnati, Ohio, 1975 when I was working in Shillito’s advertising department as a copywriter, having taken off the fringed suede jacket, the newsboy cap and the bell bottoms, and put on DVF's green and white wrap dress to go to work. So I climb in the mini cooper and motor over.
I love the walk on the promenade past the Broad Contemporary and the Resnick Pavillion to the old May Company that has been turned into the Furstenberg pop up. It’s a blazing path through red columns and palm trees and soothing places to sit and relax with close ups of Ms. Von Furstenberg’s face. Red lips. Blue eyes. Oh yes.
Inside, the first thing I see is Diane’s portrait wearing THE dress with the caption:
“Feel like a woman, Wear a dress!”
then floor to ceiling photographs of Diane wearing the dress, showing the dress to buyers, a letter from Diana Vreeland about the dress when she was the editor at Vogue, and a sculpture of THE wrap dress bang in the middle of the aisle.
The exhibition is so well presented in not only the dresses, but the walls and floors all geometric patterns and chain linked and leopard papered in a room of 4 or 5 massive bays with 198 mannequins all in The Wrap dress; short, long, printed, solid, stenciled with her face, in florals, in bold stripes, in mod prints of celadon blue, black and white, in diamond patterns of turquoise and black, in muted yellow, gray and white mini pattern next to a black dress with yellow and white daisies. I am in heaven. I am so excited I hardly have time to take in another room of Chuck Close and Avedon photos of Diane and all her Studio 54 co-horts.
“the women of the land had gone to work - heigh - ho!”
The cell rings and I get an invitation to dinner.
The down side: No dresses in the gift shop. What?
I’ve got to go get a dress.
