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Keyword

ManStyle

Start Date 11 March 2011
End Date 30 October 2011
Venue NGV Australia, National Gallery of Victoria
Location Melbourne, Australia
Curator Paola Di Trocchio, Laura Jocic, Roger Leong, Katie Somerville and Danielle Whitfield
Exhibition display of dress in glass vitrine
Exhibition display of dress on open display plinths
Exhibition display of single dressed mannequin

Charting a course between absolute restraint and ostentatious display ManStyle explores the extremes of masculine style and some of the most influential ideas that have pervaded menswear over the past three centuries.

ManStyle presents a broad survey of menswear from around 1740 to the present. Beginning in the eighteenth century with exquisite brocade and embroidered silk coats, the exhibition then explores the evolution of the modern suit via the elegantly honed lines of the nineteenth century dandy, examining the rise of tailoring with its focus on perfect cut and fit. From tradition to transformation, ManStyle considers changes in proportion, shape and detail as well as material, colour and pattern, including the more radical influence of sportswear, sub-cultural attire and street wear on men’s fashion. In contemporary menswear design new and traditional modes of dressing are continually merging to create new definitions of masculinity.

Drawn from the NGV Collection the exhibition incorporates clothes, accessories and paintings.Designers include Thom Browne, Pierre Cardin, Morrissey Edmiston, Jean Paul Gaultier, Tommy Nutter,  Rick Owens and WORLD.

Photos courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria