’90s fashion designer brings his collections to the Wexner Center in new exhibit

Jillian Fountain
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 11:47:01 +0000
Arts & Life, Fashion, Fine Arts, ’90s, All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion, fashion, Fashion exhibit, featured, Megan Cavanaugh, wexner center for the arts

“All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion” at the RISD Museum April 8 through Sept. 11, 2018. Credit: Courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

The ’90s will be back and on display at the Wexner Center for the Arts starting Friday.

The art gallery’s new winter exhibit, “All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion,” will showcase more than 70 ensembles from the designer’s career in the New York fashion world from 1989 to 1999.

First installed at the Rhode Island School of Design, this three-gallery exhibit will take visitors through two rooms of handmade accessories, smaller pieces and catwalk footage, followed by a finale space that showcases 65 detail-oriented garments, said Megan Cavanaugh, the Wexner Center’s director of patron services.

“It’s this room full of amazing clothing,” she said. “All of the pieces have these details like beadwork and embroidery. You can see there’s a lot of handy work that goes into them and so, that last space you really just get wowed by how much there is.”

“Muchness,” a term coined by Oldham, is the unifying theme for the exhibit, which mixes and matches collections from his decade of work.

“It’s this idea that there is so much that’s put into these garments,” said Michael Goodson, senior curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center. “They’re not predicated on spareness or minimalism. There are a lot of ideas thrown into these works.”

Cavanaugh said Oldham’s phrase seems to fit right into the exhibit’s overall title. The designer named his work “All of Everything” as a nod to a quote from poet Gertrude Stein, “And then there is using everything,” as Oldham’s work really did use “everything” to create his collection.

“He would go through the trash and pull out interesting things to make a print for fabric. He went back to his childhood for inspiration for buttons,” she said. “He literally pulled from every aspect of his life to infuse his design with these moments of fun and intrigue.”

Goodson said he hopes that people walk away from the exhibit appreciating Oldham’s attention to detail and skill in crafting handmade clothing.

“He doesn’t just buy fabric and design a garment,” he said. “These are impeccably made pieces of sculpture.”

“All of Everything” launches alongside “William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time” and “Anita Witek: Clip” for the Wexner Center’s Winter 2018 Exhibition. The galleries will be on display until April 15. Admission is free to college students.