Met Museum: Death Becomes Her

The Met's current fashion exhibit, Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire, is by far the most interesting the museum has staged in recent years.  Covering the period from 1815 to 1915, the show documents those fashions once worn by the bereaved to signify their loss.

It's difficult for those living in twenty-first century New York to appreciate the changes that have occurred over the past hundred years in the manner in which death is acknowledged in our society.  Though the specter is as present among the living as it always was, the act of dying is today so largely hidden from view that contemporary Americans may be considered to be in a state of denial over its very existence.  No longer are the terminally ill cared for by loved ones at home.  Almost all patients can now expect to spend their last hours hidden conveniently out of sight at a hospital or hospice where family and friends will only briefly visit before returning to their daily routine.  Nor are the dead any longer waked at home in the parlor (now become "the living room") but are instead put on display at a funeral home.  There, before commencing their final ride to the graveyard, they are coiffed and made up by professionals to appear to the greatest extent possible as though they were still among the living.

Such was not always the case.  As the exhibit makes clear, there once existed in our society carefully prescribed customs designed not only to pay respect to those who had passed but also to aid their survivors in overcoming their loss and in returning to the normal workaday world of the living.  Most essential among these was the clothing worn by women who had been deprived of their spouses.  This was appropriate since widowhood was only a century ago a much more overwhelming experience than it is currently.  At that time, women were in every way much more dependent on their husbands than is the case today.  Few then had an income of their own or the means to support themselves through their individual efforts.  The loss of a husband necessarily resulted in a profound change in circumstances for the wife left behind.  There was a new vulnerability that was not only financial but social as well.  Death entailed not only the loss of a provider but also of a protector.

One of the most fascinating features of the exhibit is the progression shown in stages of mourning.  At first, a widow would wear only the heaviest black fabric and crepe.  As time went on - and the mourning period was a drawn out affair that lasted over a period of many months and sometimes even years - the widow would slowly introduce elements of white trim into her outfit and finally wear colors that indicated her proper return to society.  

Gradually, the fashion rituals changed from one generation to the next.  One of the most dramatic examples of this can be seen in the contrast between the plain black clothing worn by Queen Victoria, who mourned for forty years the loss of her beloved consort until her own death in 1901, and the sumptuous gowns designed for her daughter-in-law Queen Alexandra upon the death of her husband the king in 1910.  There was much more involved here than a simple modification in style.  This upheaval in fashion mirrored a change in attitude toward death itself.  The twentieth century was a much different era than that which had preceded it.  There was no longer time in a busy industrial world for drawn out remembrance of those who had passed.  From now on, the dead would be buried as expediently as possible while the world they left behind quickly forgot and moved on.

While the old fashions may strike the viewer today as inordinately morbid, they must be seen as part of a psychological healing process that has no parallel in modern society.  One must wonder how much damage is inflicted by their removal on the minds of the bereaved who are no longer given an adequate opportunity to adjust to their loss.  The repression of mourning ceremonies is not at all a healthy sign since it is through participation in these rites that one comes to terms with the knowledge of one's own impending end.  Instead, Americans today do everything in their power to distract themselves from thinking of those last moments that every day draw closer to them.  The finality of death is no longer accepted and no psychological preparation is made for it.  It is actually the repression of all thought of dying that is unwholesome and that makes the end harder to bear when it finally arrives.

The exhibit continues through February 1, 2015.