Museo de la Moda

Museo de la Moda

Manolo says, today in the New York Times there is the annotated list of the 41 Places to Go in 2011, which was, as such things usually are, mostly the exercise in status-conscious, Bobo one-upmanship.

Naturally, because the Manolo is both the bohemian and bourgeois, the Manolo was pleased to see that he had recently been to several of the places on the list, including the number one choice, Santiago, Chile.

And, he was extremely happy to see that there was the entire paragraph in the NY Times Santiago entry devoted to the Museo de la Moda

Perhaps the most remarkable cultural space to open in the last few years is the Museo de la Moda, a privately financed fashion museum inside a revamped 1960s Modernist mansion. It has a permanent collection of nearly 10,000 pieces of couture and memorabilia (of which 800 are typically on display), including a light-blue jacket worn in 1966 by John Lennon and a black strapless gown worn in 1981 by Diana, Princess of Wales.

The Manolo felt that the museum was strongest in the clothing of the mid-20th century, undoubtedly the result of the founder Jorge Yarur’s unusual filial devotion, which has preserved not only the family’s modernist mansion, but his mother’s clothing collection. Indeed, it is the clothing of the mother which forms the heart of this collection, lovingly displayed in cases in the darkened, converted bedrooms and family rooms of the mansion, as if they were the religious objects in glass reliquaries. (As one internet wag said, Jorge Yarur, The Most Fashionable Mama’s Boy Ever.)

Beyond the mother’s clothing, which is good but not great, however, there is the extensive collection of important and historical pieces, including several major Paul Poiret gowns, along with the Diors, the Chanels, and many older items of interest.

The shoe collection was likewise well done, although the Manolo did have the very sniffy pleasure of pointing out that two pairs of the boots had been misidentified, their cards transposed (undoubtedly the error of the inattentive curator).

Of the course, there many more reasons to go to Santiago, but for the Manolo, it was the Museo de la Moda that made the trip.

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