The New York Times International - 30.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019| 15

culture

American museums, movies and mag-
azines have been on a yearslong binge
of ’60s nostalgia, pegged to a rolling
sequence of 50th anniversaries: the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and
Neil Armstrong, Woodstock and the
Manson murders. It seems Americans
can’t get enough of the era, and the
optimism that percolated amid great
social upheaval. But well beyond their
borders, before the 1973 oil crisis
tanked the global economy, other coun-
tries were partying and protesting just
as hard, and a youth culture of sex,
drugs and rock ’n’ roll spanned the
globe. The United States had no mo-
nopoly on grooviness.
“Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion,” on
view at the Brooklyn Museum through
Jan. 5, offers a swinging reintroduction
to Parisian style in the 1960s and 1970s,
when the New Look gave way to thigh-
high boots and dresses of heat-molded
synthetics. The Concorde was flying,
Françoise Hardy and Joe Dassin were
singing, and women (and men) cruised
the Left Bank in Mr. Cardin’s stretchy
knits and swooping miniskirts.
With 85 ensembles, the earliest from
1953 and the most recent from this
decade, “Future Fashion” is not,
strictly speaking, another ’60s show.
But its core is the Space Age outfits
that Mr. Cardin designed in a young,
newly prosperous Paris, seen here on
mannequins as well as in photographs
and films of Jeanne Moreau, Mia Far-
row and the cast of “Star Trek.” Some

are chic, many are risible; all of the

show has an exuberant view of the

future that marks it as decidedly from

the past.

Mr. Cardin, one of the most commer-

cially successful of all French design-

ers (and still working at 97), was never

a great artist in the manner of Chris-

tian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga and

Yves Saint Laurent. Born Pietro Cardin

in 1922, he fled with his family from

Fascist Italy to Vichy, France, which

would become the seat of France’s

nominal government in 1940. After the

liberation of France, he moved to Paris

and apprenticed with the couturier

Jeanne Paquin. Later he worked in the

studios of Elsa Schiaparelli and Dior,

went into costuming and presented his

first couture collection in 1953. He won

acclaim for his “bubble dresses” (dis-

appointingly absent from this show),

cinched at the waist and hem. Here are

a beige coatdress of beige bouclé wool,

plus a fitted day suit worn by Jacque-

line Kennedy; both have thick roll

collars that would become a Cardin

signature.

In 1959, Mr. Cardin did something

shocking: He mounted a ready-to-wear

presentation, at Printemps department

store in Paris. It was one of the first by

a named designer, and for his effron-

tery he was kicked out of the French

haute couture guild. (He was later

readmitted.) But Mr. Cardin was ahead

of his time in anticipating the allure of

high fashion for the middle classes,

enjoying the 30-year postwar boom

later christened the Trente Glorieuses.

He masterminded a business ap-

proach now gone general: glamorous

couture as a loss-leader, ready-to-wear

as the profit center, and licensing deals

to radiate your name worldwide. It

made Mr. Cardin rich — he would go

on to buy and to franchise the Parisian

bistro Maxim’s — even as these licens-

ing arrangements left the Cardin

brand, stuck onto bottled water and

tinned cassoulet, diffuse and cheap-

ened.

Where he excelled was in bold,

futuristic day wear, often with unortho-

dox cuts that reshaped or disguised

the body. A pink leather jacket from

1980 has bulging shoulders like the

pauldrons of medieval armor; the

arms of a wool woman’s suit disguise

the wearer’s body with oversize fabric

circles. One mannequin sports a brown

sweater and paneled skirt as well as a

Plexiglas helmet, like an on-trend

Apollo astronaut. Mr. Cardin took his

space travel seriously: In 1969, he

went to Houston and quizzed officials

at the headquarters of the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration

about how to stay stylish on the moon.

Like his colleagues André Courrèges

and Mary Quant, Mr. Cardin proposed

a sleek, forward-dawning fashion that

sometimes dissolved gender distinc-

tions — above all in his Cosmocorps

collections of the mid-1960s, whose

zipped sweaters and belted jumpsuits

could be worn by men and women.

Other outfits from the late ’60s are

rather less unisex, like a “porthole”

dress with cutout nipples. A man’s

jumpsuit of teal wool felt features a

leather thong worn over the trousers:

one part Superman, two parts Tom of

Finland.

Especially when compared with the

day wear, most of Mr. Cardin’s evening

gowns are tacky and uncreative. He is

hung up on stretchy fabrics shaped by

stiff hoops; one dress of black jersey

incorporates six parallel rings, spaced

out from the waist to the feet, that give

it the look of a collapsible laundry

hamper. None of these ensembles,

presented together in a pin-lit gallery

meant to evoke a sky full of stars,

display any of the exacting craftsman-

ship that Issey Miyake or Hussein

Chalayan would bring to body-disguis-

ing gowns. And only a few, like a “light-

up” dress with an LED tube sewn onto

the chest, have the daffy futurism of

the Cosmocorps.

Space Age daydreams

EXHIBITION REVIEW

A new look at a designer

who’s still defined by his

late ’60s futuristic fashions

BY JASON FARAGO

PIERRE PELEGRY; YOSHI TAKATA

Pierre Cardin, above, in his atelier in 1957.

Left, his two-tone jersey dresses, with

vinyl waders, from 1969. The designer is

still at work at 97.

ARCHIVES PIERRE CARDIN

Clockwise from above: extreme shoulders in a leather jacket (1980) and wool coat with circular details (1981); Raquel Welch in a
Cardin outfit in 1970; leather masks and plastic hoods, among the unisex accessories featured in Cardin runway shows.

JONATHAN DORADO/BROOKLYN MUSEUM

TERRY O’NEILL/ICONIC IMAGES

Mr. Cardin has been one of the

most commercially successful of

all French designers, but he was

never a great artist.

JONATHAN DORADO/BROOKLYN MUSEUM

On International Human Rights Day, in
December 2011, Hillary Clinton gave a
monumental speech at the United
Nations in Geneva, declaring that “gay
rights are human rights, and human
rights are gay rights.” Largely directed
toward the African countries in which
homosexuality was then — and, in
some places, still is — viewed as a
crime punishable by death, her words
were met with overwhelmingly pos-
itive reactions in the West, where a
growing popular support for L.G.B.T.Q.

issues has emerged after decades of

public struggle for equality. Across

Africa, however, the speech may have

had unintended negative consequences

for L.G.B.T.Q. communities that have

created spaces for themselves “under-

ground, and out of sight.”

The journalist Robbie Corey-Boulet’s

timely book, “Love Falls on Us,” ad-

dresses the complicated relationship

between African L.G.B.T.Q. activists

and an American foreign policy whose

shifts on gay rights have in many cases

exacerbated their difficulties by shin-

ing a global spotlight on otherwise

unnoticed ways of living. Wisely avoid-

ing the temptation to write about queer

relationships across the entire conti-

nent, Corey-Boulet focuses on activists

and individuals in three countries —

Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Liberia —

highlighting the peculiarities of their

political and cultural contexts.

From the outset, Corey-Boulet

makes it clear that his book is a series

of snapshots rather than a single,

generalized picture of gay life across

an often maligned and misunderstood

continent. He is painfully aware of the

common errors many writers and

journalists make when covering Africa

— “the mistake inherent in conceiving

of sexual minorities in one city, or one

country, or anywhere, as a kind of

monolith” — and studiously avoids

their hierarchical language and ster-

eotypes. Instead, he humanizes his

subjects by revealing the complexities

and variations among L.G.B.T.Q. lives,

whether closeted or not. A Camer-

oonian man named Lambert, who’d

first experimented with anal sex at 13,

later finds himself in a relationship

with an older Frenchman who “ex-

posed him to the possibilities of gay life

in places where homophobia was less

prevalent.” Another, Roger, H.I.V.-

positive and eager to pursue a mas-

ter’s degree, is arrested and abused for

sending a homoerotic text message.

“Love Falls on Us” deepens our

understanding of these lives beyond

the persecution described in Western

media. In his descriptions of nightlife

at the once-gay-friendly Victoire Bar in

Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé — raided

in 2005 by the police — and of a beach

party celebrating the Transgender Day

of Remembrance outside Monrovia,

Liberia, Corey-Boulet’s writing stands

out for its awareness of just how politi-

cally important it is to avoid sensation-

alizing minority life, and to display its

full range. As Lambert, an L.G.B.T.Q.

activist, puts it, “Human rights feeds

on horror.” Corey-Boulet explains that

in Lambert’s experience, “support

from international activists is most

readily available when the chances for

spectacle and for scoring political

points are highest.”

Corey-Boulet and the activists he

profiles are pointedly critical of the

well-meaning Westerners — including

the pro-L.G.B.T. Obama administration

— who have approached yet another

global issue with a colonial mind-set,

not allowing Africans “to discuss the

issue on their own terms, but instead

to respond to what Westerners were

doing and saying.” Even Corey-Bou-

let’s own work, however, could be more

inclusive, since he tends to include

more male-identifying voices than

female-identifying and lesbian voices,

perhaps skewing our sense of the

struggles some groups have faced in

these environments.

That said, any book this ambitious in

its attempt to capture a movement

through unique “nonconformist” expe-

riences is bound to have shortcomings.

Corey-Boulet’s work more than rises to

the challenge by elevating the extraor-

dinary ordinariness of L.G.B.T.Q. Afri-

cans who are trying to live full, peace-

ful and free lives in the places they call

home.

Pride and policy

BOOK REVIEW

Love Falls on Us:
A Story of American Ideas
and African LGBT Lives
By Robbie Corey-Boulet. 336 pp. Zed
Books. $26.95.

BY UZODINMA IWEALA

Uzodinma Iweala is the author of

“Beasts of No Nation.”

Robbie Corey-Boulet.

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