Fashion & photography: Stylish summer exhibitions

Avedon Fashion: 1944–2000

International Center of Photography

New York

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Through Sept. 20

Richard Avedon wasn’t merely the most important fashion photographer of the last half-century, said Roberta Smith in The New York Times. He was one of its greatest photographers, period. The best of his images, from the 1940s through the 1960s, “are everything you want great art to be: exhilarating, startlingly new,” and rewarding upon repeated viewing. Remarkably, then, the International Center of Photography’s new show is “the first museum exhibition devoted exclusively to his fashion work.” Finally we can see, in one place, all his most memorable photographs, many taken against his favorite backdrop, Paris. As a young American abroad, Avedon “took inspiration from great Paris street photographers” such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, but also frequently introduced a sense of humor—the model serving as straight woman. So we see “the tall, dark-haired, insuperably elegant” model Dovima dressed in a Dior gown and flanked by two elephants. All-American Suzy Parker roller-skates through the Place de la Concorde, and Elise Daniels poses placidly in a rundown Paris apartment while a contortionist, “a weight lifter, and a horn player do their things.” Such images transcend the typical fashion-photography clichés of beautiful women in elaborate outfits by creating “an almost jarring tension between the artificial and the everyday.”

Fashion Forward: Photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Through Aug. 30

America’s political hegemony after World War II set the stage for American pop culture to dominate the rest of the century, said Blake Gopnik in The Washington Post. “What other society, however powerful and sure of itself, has ever had such mental sway” over the entire planet’s imagination? Yet this infiltration also exposed American art and culture to the world in a brand-new way. This exhibition of images by Louis Dahl-Wolfe shows both sides of the interaction. Though Dahl-Wolfe was a “great fashion photographer,” this show is less notable for the clothes depicted than for the overall impression her images create of “an expansive postwar American culture that’s out and about in the world.” An all-American girl in shorts drapes herself casually against a Mexican sculpture. A woman in Tunisia reads The International Herald Tribune, “a sure sign of an American abroad.” And in a timeless Paris scene, Dahl-Wolfe reverses the usual tropes of naïve Americans and sophisticated French, showing “a gorgeous American model strolling the Seine as the quaint locals look on.”

Shopping in Paris: French Fashion, 1850–1925

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Through Oct. 25

It turns out that French fashion was invented by an Englishman, said Elizabeth Wellington in The Philadelphia Inquirer. In the 1850s, Charles Frederick Worth became “the first designer in Paris to ­dictate fashions to his clients instead of following patterns they gave him.” In doing so, he laid down “the foundation for haute couture” as it’s known today. A new display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art includes actual dresses by Worth and other early, “largely unknown designers commonly hailed as muses by their modern-day counterparts.” This was an era when “clothes defined social standing,” and well-off women first began to pursue shopping as a social statement. By the era’s end, women preferred dresses that were simpler—even as they dripped with orange chiffon, paisley, and gold lamé—than the elaborate crinoline affairs popular 75 years earlier. But all these decades’ outfits seem fussy by today’s standards. “Hats are as detailed as ornate lampshades.” White gloves and twirling parasols abound. Still, the “very defined waistlines” of the 1850s are one clear legacy for contemporary fashionistas: “While the hemlines may be longer and corsets tighter, the silhouette is familiar.”

Edward Steichen: In High Fashion

Williams College Museum of Art

Williamstown, Mass.

Through Sept. 13

Edward Steichen had made his name as a “distinguished portraitist” and pioneer of fine-art photography before he turned to fashion photography, said Mark Feeney in The Boston Globe. But when he did so, he revolutionized fashion photo­graphy as he had so many other areas of the medium. “Prior to Steichen, fashion photography had been a thing of wisps and ardent unreality.” Steichen, by contrast,­ produced crisp images that were dynamic, modern, and “often playful.” Steichen created some memorable images in the studio—the carefully lit curves and angles of a shoe in one 1927 close-up seem like abstract art. Yet his most lasting­ influence on fashion photography may have been “pioneering the use of natural settings.” By occasionally taking his models out into the real world, he set an example that would later be pushed to new levels by Martin Munkácsi and Richard Avedon. Most important, he envisioned fashion photographs not as carefully posed tableaux but as images of frozen movement. “Steichen’s photographs declare that wearing clothes is never a passive act. It’s always active.”