Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion

As a point of inspiration, a motif, and decorative element, the rose’s ubiquity in fashion is arguably unrivaled. Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion, an exhibition mounted at The Museum at FIT in New York, explored the rose as a source of inspiration for fashion. As the exhibition makes clear, the rose holds so many layered meanings that everyone can find an element of the bloom that speaks to them. In this way, the rose’s ubiquity is its power; it appears on the most delicate of debutante gowns and the most severe mourning dress. A rose is both beautiful and treacherous, elitist and democratic, fragile and resilient. It is also a symbol of love and deceit, life and death. As a starting point for an exhibition, the rose offers seemingly endless avenues of study. Co-curated by Amy de la Haye, chair of Dress History and Curatorship and joint director of the Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, and Colleen Hill, curator of costume and accessories at MFIT, the exhibition Ravishing examined how the rose has influenced fashion and has multi-faceted layers of meaning. Over 130 objects were on display, including women’s and men’s clothing and accessories that dated from ca. 1735 to the present. The garments, which were sourced from the museum’s collection or acquired for the exhibition, were as diverse as an embroidered 1810 gown to a 2019 catwalk look from the New York menswear label Nihl. The exhibition was divided into two sections, arranged to resemble gardens. The first gallery was a “rose garden of hats.” Each hat was placed upon a green 1 Amy de la Haye, Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion (London: Yale University Press, 2020), 12.