FROM NOVEMBER 18th 2020
THEMATIC EXHIBITION AT THE SUȚU PALACE
FASHION IN INTER-WAR BUCHAREST
The exhibition dedicated to fashion and its evolution meets the questions of the specialist public or the public in love with fashion and interested in urban life in all its aspects.
The return in time through analysis of the beautiful, of the decorative arts, especially of the costume, closely connected with the architectural and urban development of Bucharest demonstrates a fascinating and complex evolution on all these plans. History offers enough data to begin this process: engravings, fine arts, period photographs with characters, streets and boulevards, terraces and alleys, the vestiges kept in the museum’s collection, all of them will help us to recapture an interesting and flourishing era lived by the old Bucharest. The chance to study the collections of the Bucharest Municipality Museum, especially the Costume and clothing accessories collection, gave birth to the desire to make known the heritage treasures, but also the evolution of fashion, the mirror of the simple or complicated life of each of our fellows.
Under the shining crust of trendiness, there is a whole scaffold of social and material, cultural and artistic, moral and affective, as well as political, aspects that we will try to highlight.
The costume, at the threshold of the twentieth century, carried with it all the ingredients of a past bringing along many prejudices, a social and economic status, obligations and tastes. Of course, it is that costume belonging to the daily life, worn by social strata in urban areas, the aristocracy of the time.
Western influences, the Art Nouveau decorations and the explosion of Art Deco elegance, the cut and the evolving line realized in famous London, Paris, Vienna or Bucharest workshops, or by anonymous tailors, the expensive and fine materials denote an active, self-motivated Romanian world, confident of its destiny. We are witnessing a world of stratification and pride, with an acute sense of masking the role and position of the individual, a prosperous, dynamic society, aware of the value of an illustrious past and of its prosperous objectives, frantically knocking at the gate of the new century.
The profound changes of Bucharest in the interwar period, referring to industrialization, urban development, architectural and cultural advancement, have imposed a certain state of tranquility and desire to emancipate, to women and men in urban society.
This is an exhibition that brings together women and men’s costumes from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, clothing accessories, interior decorative ensembles, pictures taken by character or city photos, architecture, streets and boulevards, pubs and terraces, pieces of furniture, crystal and porcelain objects, which adorned the interiors of the Bucharest houses. All of them form an image of the city, which fashion communicates as a discreet and elegant messenger.
Along with the costumes, objects of the following collections: Photographs, postcards and photographic clichés, Decorative Art – metal, crystal and porcelain, furniture, Miscellaneous, Science and Technique will be exhibited. In the Conference room situated on the ground floor of the Suțu Palace, one can admire elegant costumes, physiognomies and images of the city, home interiors – now a vivid memory of the frenetic life of old Bucharest.
Dr. Maria-Camelia Ene, Head of the Bucharest Medieval History Bureau