When clothes become more than a functional outer layer, high fashion can cross into high art. Three art exhibits opening and ending this month capitalize on our collective fascination with fabrics, style and status.
With about 500 items from more than a dozen different Asian cultures, “Writing with Thread: Traditional Textiles of Southwest Chinese Minorities” communicates values through piles of silver necklaces, elaborate headdresses, delicate embroidery and ancestral images. Chinese miniskirts are among the items on display at the exhibit, which opens at the Chazen on Friday, Jan. 30.
….In a different way, American crazy quilts reveal cultural values. “A Fairyland of Fabrics: The Victorian Crazy Quilt,” a new show at the Design Gallery in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology, describes how “maid, wife and widow” (to quote an 1890 “Good Housekeeping” poem) were caught up in “crazy quilt mania.”