Review: Jaw-dropping clothes and room to grow in 1st SCAD FASH show

Bottom line: Beautiful clothes but scant information and context make this debut SCAD FASH show a mixed bag.

You can see one era’s definition of power in dress in the famous arms and armor room at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, dedicated to the steel and chain mail fashion choices of kings and members of court.

Discover another expression of social status and power in the show dedicated to one of the fashion world's shining stars, "Oscar de la Renta," at the new SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion, which opened Oct. 3.

The exhibition features 84 outfits designed by Oscar de la Renta, the Dominican Republic-born couturier to royalty and movie stars, who died in October 2014. It also spotlights a number of pieces by de la Renta’s successor creative director Peter Copping, and shows how deftly Copping has adopted de la Renta’s sensibility; his classic lines and unabashed femininity. In fact, Copping’s designs often look disarmingly vintage, like something de la Renta might have made in the ’50s or ’60s though in fact, all of Copping’s designs hail from the fashion house’s 2015 collection.

The show is, among many other things, a testament to how powerful women have armed themselves for social combat in incomparably lovely costumes. De la Renta was known for his elegant, ladylike, dignified approach, a restraint and old world glamour that endeared him to first ladies and image-conscious movie stars interested in shoring up their blue-chip reputation.

Many of the garments on display for “Oscar de la Renta” have been loaned by their famous owners: Vogue magazine’s fierce and powerful editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (the presumed inspiration for the boss-from-hell in “The Devil Wears Prada”), Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Laura Bush and the kind of ladies who lunch — Mercedes T. Bass, Lauren Santo Domingo, Lynn Wyatt — who haunt the society pages.

The exhibition is a shockingly intimate presentation of gowns that also feels like vicarious contact with the women who wore them. Considering the renown of the powerful women who have sported de la Renta’s couture, these gowns are shockingly tiny, even ethereal, featuring wasp waists to put even Scarlett O’Hara to shame, and filigrees of lace that look far too delicate to conceal their owner’s assets.

Presented for the most part at the viewer’s level (a small portion of the gowns are displayed on raised plinths), with no ropes or barriers to divide viewer and gown, you can get close enough to appreciate the luscious fabrics and exquisite detail of their making.

The gowns are for the most part arranged by mood: graphic black-and-white dresses by both de la Renta and Copping; a hallway of glittering gold and silver evening gowns reflected in a Versailles hall of mirrors; festive flower-festooned, scarlet gowns that attest to de la Renta’s Latin influences.

Projections created by SCAD alums Whitney and Micah Stansell add to the ethereal sensation of these magical gowns: A video of tumbling glitter or diamonds behind a display of gowns has the feel of a credit sequence from the classic Hollywood director Douglas Sirk. In addition, SCAD alum Lucha Rodriguez has created prints to commemorate the exhibition. The inclusion of SCAD alums is a nice way to bring a local touch and sensibility to a show first exhibited in Savannah.

There is a significant drawback to the exhibition, however, which could benefit from more information about the clothing on display and its designers. Treating fashion as delectable candy in a shop window, “Oscar de la Renta” in some ways suggests the clothes are enough, leaning on the wow factor of these beautiful dresses and leaving descriptions rudimentary, failing in many cases to even identify the year of the outfit’s creation or where it was worn. Context matters. If fashion is to be treated as worthy of a museum display, the curators should take a page from celebrated shows like the critically lauded traveling exhibition “Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen” and give fashion its due rather than treating it as window dressing.