Bard Graduate Center-Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette

The Bard Graduate Center is a jewel box of museum in a brown stone on 86th/CPW.  The Center is dedicated to the study of decorative arts & design in history. This accessible and lovely structure is very user friendly.  It feels private & welcoming.  The must see show on now features historic body contouring contraptions that will have you laughing & scratching your head.  Many will recall the bustles & corsets worn by American women in the late 19thC, (think Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.)  The Europeans women in the 18th & 19th C also have their beguiling (what were they thinking) undergarments on display.  Women's dresses were so wide doorways needed to be expanded to allow passageway.  The ingeniuty of the designs which are demonstrated collapsing & expanding are astounding.  Least you think the breasts were overlooked, worry not.  The exposure of the décolletage had its highs & lows and varying means for pushing up, pinning down or pointing to a tip.  The sillouhettes of the bodystyle most in favor in an era are interesting to see & compare.  The most shocking (heaven knows how things goes) were the undergarments designed to confine & constrict the female form during pregnancy & the stature of young children.  These seemed as barbaric as feet-binding in Asia.  Men's fashions & peculiar body fixtures were not immune to display & ridicule.  Of course these men were known as Dandies with puffed up collars & padded calves.  I shudder to wonder how we will be viewed by future generations.  Perhaps we will be known for inserting body enhancing objects directly into the body.  Everybody should visit this intimate Bard Graduate Center and enjoy the "Intimate History of the Silhouette."