Michael Cunningham

Andrew Bolton

Amanda Garfinkel

Theodore Martin

Jessica Regan

Jan Glier Reeder

“An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second.” —Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, 1928 About Time: Fashion and Duration traces the evolution of fashion, from 1870 to the present, through a linear timeline of iconic garments, each paired with an alternate design that jumps forward or backward in time. These unexpected pairings, which relate to one another through shape, motif, material, pattern, technique, or decoration, create a unique and disruptive fashion chronology that conflates notions of past, present, and future. Virginia Woolf serves as “ghost narrator”: excerpts from her novels reflect on the passage of time with each subsequent plate pairing. A new short story by Michael Cunningham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Hours, recounts a day in the life of a woman over a time span of 150 years through her changing fashions. Scholar Theodore Martin analyzes theoretical responses to the nature of time, underscoring that time is not simply a sequence of historical events. And fashion photographer Nicholas Alan Cope illustrates 120 fashions with sublime black and-white photography. This stunning book reveals fashion’s paradoxical connection to linear notions of time.

Fashion and Duration

About Time

Published in conjunction with an exhibition on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 5-Aug. 15, 2010, and at the Brooklyn Museum, May 7-Aug. 1, 2010.

Masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

High Style

Jan Glier Reeder

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