美国国家公共电台 NPR We Are What We Wear: Exhibition Examines Clothing That Changed The World

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

All right. What do a baseball cap, a sari and a little black dress designed by Chanel have in common? They are all on display in a new exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. MOMA calls them garments that change the world. NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg says the show is less about fashion and more about design, history and why things last.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE 1: There's a social history woven into the evolution of what we wear every day. The 111 items on view explore that history in objects that range from futuristic to sublime 2 to completely ordinary.

Are you really a shoe fetishist?

GLENN LOWRY: I love shoes. Everybody has their madness. I love shoes.

STAMBERG: Glenn Lowry, MOMA's dynamic director, has a lot to love in this show - clogs 3, Converse 4 All Stars, Manolo Blahniks, flip-flops aka thongs 5.

PAOLA ANTONELLI: The thong 6 is very important. It's a humble 7 masterpiece. That's why it exists in all cultures. I was just disappointed he didn't want to talk about the hoodie.

STAMBERG: Let's go see the hoodie.

ANTONELLI: (Laughter).

STAMBERG: Curator Paola Antonelli heads across the big space - this show takes up the entire sixth floor of MOMA - to stop at a red hooded 8 top made by Champion in the 1980s. The hoodie, she says, was functional 9 first. After training, sweaty athletes put them on to stay warm. But it's become political.

ANTONELLI: When Trayvon Martin was wearing it in Florida a few years ago, he was walking at night and buying candy, George Zimmerman thought that he was suspicious because he was wearing the hoodie. So this disconnect and this misinterpretation transformed the hoodie into a tragic 10 symbol and also a political symbol.

STAMBERG: An ancient religious symbol is the hijab, a head and neck covering that preserves modesty 11 for some Muslim women. It's been controversial as well as coveted 12. A Muslim designer in Australia attached a head cover to waterproof 13 leggings and a long sleeved top to make a burkini so someone could swim.

ANTONELLI: She was an observant Muslim young girl that wanted to be a lifeguard. And so there are these beautiful pictures of this woman beaming with the burkini of the same color as the other lifeguards amongst all the lifeguards on a surfboard.

STAMBERG: She could stay modest and do her surfside surveillance. The museum puts the burkini next to a bikini, the little two-piece nothing that originated in France. It first appeared in 1946 to the delight of some beachgoers. Others were scandalized, and some knew they could never try it.

ANTONELLI: The bikini was so skimpy as to be unwearable by a proper woman.

STAMBERG: So skimpy that at first the designer couldn't get professional models to display it. So he hired a striptease dancer from the Casino de Paris. To cover, to uncover - different cultures have different answers, but curator Antonelli says there is one universal.

ANTONELLI: The female body is always a battleground.

STAMBERG: There's rarely controversy 14 about work clothes, but they also change with the times. A well-worn pair of 501s tells the story that began in 1853 when Levi-Strauss and Company started making blue jeans. MOMA fashion historian Stephanie Kramer says denim 15 fabric 16 had been around for years, but during the Gold Rush, Levi-Strauss stitched it into a workman's necessity.

STEPHANIE KRAMER: They were the ones that put the rivets 17 at the different stress points of the jeans including pockets, crotch, areas like that.

STAMBERG: Made them more durable 18, lasted longer, became a classic. Today that utilitarian 19 item has been turned into a fashion statement. Now designer-made ripped jeans sell for a fortune, as do acid-washed jeans, stone-washed jeans.

What does that tell you?

KRAMER: I think it tells you that jeans are the ultimate modern garment. They're both timeless and temporal.

STAMBERG: For the grand finale the museum picks maybe the most common piece of clothing there is, something you'll find in the bureau drawer of people you know, male or female.

ANTONELLI: The white T-shirt. Yes. It's actually - it makes a lot of sense to end with the white T-shirt.

STAMBERG: First of all, Paola Antonelli says, it's a power piece.

ANTONELLI: Because power is still represented in some people's imagination by the male three-piece suit or two-piece suit. It's still very masculine. But in truth, today, the guy wearing a three-piece suit is probably the bodyguard 20. The guy with the real power is wearing a T-shirt.

STAMBERG: But there are other reasons the white T-shirt is this show's final fashion statement. It brings together various points the show is trying to make.

ANTONELLI: The idea of timelessness, the idea of universality. The idea of good design, old-school good design. Form follows function. And ecology, fast fashion, how we dispose of objects. So everything is crystallized by the white T-shirt.

STAMBERG: On a video monitor installed near these iconic threads, a young woman walks toward us in her white T-shirt. She begins to take it off, and underneath 21 there's another white T-shirt. And under that, another. And another and another. The message is clear. This T-shirt goes on and on. It will never end. It's eternal.

In Manhattan, I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.