Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Costume Institute recently acquired three dresses designed by Fukuko Ando in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Costume Art’. Two of Ando’s dresses are currently on view in ‘Costume Art’.
Following the Museum’s acquisition of the three dresses, Ando discusses her design practice and inspirations. A Japanese designer trained in Paris haute couture, Ando has spent more than four decades developing thematic dress collections that reflect both material and spiritual concerns. For Fukuko Ando, the body is a catalyst for artistic intuition.
‘Wing Y’ and ‘Blood’ are made of silk. In discussing one piece, Ando identifies it as part of her 1996 ‘Shibori’ series and describes it as one of her early works. She explains that shibori fabric is itself the result of complex handiwork and was traditionally used for kimonos with straight-cut seams, while her decision to cut it on the bias and use pintucks allowed her to create a different kind of ‘music’ and disregard the traditional seams that give clothing its shape.
She said she listened to the fabric, producing a dress unlike anything she had created before, and characterized the result as a dialogue in which the fabric itself showed its own harmony. She places at the core of all her creations a body that is conscious in every direction—360 degrees.
Ando also recalled seeing the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, originally organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983 and traveling to the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, in 1990, describing the works as true haute couture pieces.
