Death Becomes Her

On Friday my friend, Francesca, and I did what all young women dream of doing on a Friday night— we went to the Death Becomes Her exhibit of mourning attire at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute (No? That's just us? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

The opening day of the exhibit (in October) had been marked on my calendar for months—an exhibit dedicated to mourning, named after one of my very favorite Meryl movies—obviously. Fortunately, it lived up to my high expectations and even more fortunately, photographs (no flash, of course) are allowed.

The exhibit features about thirty examples of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mourning ensembles, mostly for women, although there were two men's outfits and one child's. I've read everything I can get my hands on about mourning practices and I've seen a few examples of mourning attire in some of the house tours I've taken, but this was certainly the biggest (and best) collection I've ever seen. Of course, since it's housed in the Anna Wintour Costume Institute, the explanation placards skew a bit more toward the fashion side of things, but that was to be expected.

The whole concept of mourning attire (and memorial art, hair jewelry, post-mortem photography, etc.) is so fascinating to me and seems so distant from how our society deals with its dead today. The exhibit was small, but I loved the simple white mannequins (with my dream white hair) and haunting music that played throughout. I could have done without the projected quotes, but this is 2014 so I know there had to be some sort of multimedia element. Speaking of 2014, there's also a hashtag (#DeathBecomesHer), which is currently filled with shots of this exhibit mixed with screencaps of Meryl Streep as Madeline Ashton, making it my very favorite hashtag of all time.

There's even a tiny gift shop in the corner, with items ranging from pretty (jewelry, notecards) to pretty gross (the illustrated book of diseases). I couldn't resist buying a postcard, because it's not every day that an exhibit likes this comes along—one that is so in line with all of my current interests that I can hardly believe my luck.