Uninhabited Dresses: Frida Kahlo, from Icon of Mexico to Fashion Muse

Abstract

This article examines the shifting meanings of Frida Kahlo's figure and the Tehuana ethnic dress known as her trademark look. It analyzes Appearances Can Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo, the first exhibit of the artist's recently recovered wardrobe on view at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City from 2012-14. Engaging the exhibit's suggestion that the artist casts a "spectral" image over contemporary fashion, this article inquires about the ways history inscribes itself on fashion despite its pretensions of constant innovation. The exhibit is examined in dialogue with Frida Kahlo's My Dress Hangs There (1933), an image that reflects on modernity and national identity through the tension between competing visions of femininity and fashion represented by Mae West and a disembodied Tehuana dress.

‘Strike a pose’: Fabricating posthumous presence in mannequin design

“…This appropriation is also the conceit of the Kahlo mannequin design that adopts a ‘mimetic’ (Hjemdahl, 2014: 121) representation of the artist. Unlike the faceless entities that modelled her attire in the earlier Appearances Can Be Deceiving exhibition in Mexico (Aragon, 2014), her physical attributes are directly replicated at the V&A. In the tradition of wax figures in museum display, the mannequin assumes the function of an effigy as it channels her facial features and iconic hair braiding.…”

“…These artefacts therefore adopt a symbolic resonance as embellishments that perform an empowering function in the face of disability. Adornment practices that deflect attention are a familiar trope within Kahlo’s biography and art (Ankori, 2018; Aragon, 2014; Baddeley, 2018; Barson, 2005; Fuentes, 1995; Henestrosa, 2018; Lowe, 1995). Given this exhibition’s thematic thread of material artefacts shaping and framing embodiment, it seems apposite to focus on the contribution the mannequin can make to this conceptual framework.…”