Dangerous Liaisons

A museum doesn’t have to throw a fancy party like this weekend’s Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Ball to get a £10m donation, but it helps. Last year the theme of the show the party heralded was “Goddess”. Photographers snapped non-stop as actresses and models sashayed up the broad stone steps from Fifth Avenue.

This time around the theme is “Dangerous Liaisons: The Art of Seduction in 18th century French Dress“, and everyone is preparing for heaving, rococo bodices.

In the meanwhile, a set of ghostly mannequins have been making their way from Deptford, England to New York. The 33 figures are of course to be used in the exhibition that opens on Monday and has been put together by opera designer Patrick Kinmonth.

Each figure has been worked into an 18th century pose and will sit in one of seven classically-styled rooms in the museum, wearing clothes from that era.
The attention to detail means that the faces, bodies, arms and hands are particular to each character.
A number of dog mannequins have also been made.

“Dangerous Liaisons” focuses on dress and its aesthetic interplay with art, furniture, and the broader decorative arts between 1750 and 1789. Presented in the dramatic setting of The Wrightsman Galleries, the Museum’s French period rooms, the exhibition explores the dressed body’s spatial negotiation of the 18th-century interior as a choreography of seduction and erotic play.

MadonnaTribe’s comment: you’re always on the edge, Madge.