A sneak peek into Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Met

I popped uptown yesterday to the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute’s new Anna Wintour Costume Center for the press preview of its first exhibition, Charles James: Beyond Fashion spotlighting the career of  the legendary 20th-century Anglo-American couturier  (1906–1978). Through the years, I've seen pieces of James work  and many of the gowns on display seemed like beautiful old friends that I was delighted to reaquaint with. But it wasn't a gown that made me smile. The first down jacket, and it was couture. It was seeing his white celenese satin jacket with eiderdown filling, 1937, a textile based sculpture in response to the boxy fur jackets that designer Elsa Schiaparelli was showing and what many women wore at the time. Love it or leave it, this

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