Curators: Mary Kelleher, Aishwarya Pureti, Ilaria Trame, Jiaxuan Wu
30” - 21” - 30” is a performance exploring Christian Dior’s 1952 Palmyre dress (GAL1971.45.1), which was owned by Wallis Simpson, duchess of Windsor, and donated by her to the Palais Galliera—Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris. The curators analyze their object using Bernard Rudofsky’s Are Clothes Modern? as an interpretive lens. The figure of the duchess of Windsor was characterized by a number of contradictory qualities: great wealth and thinness, simple adornment and elaborate ornamentation, and the conveyance of royal status through appearance. These dualities, which align with the New Look created by Dior during that period, are embodied in the Palmyre dress.
This performance is part of Objects in Trouble, a collaboration between the Palais Galliera—Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris and the MA Fashion Studies program at The New School’s Parsons Paris. Objects in Trouble consists of four performances, each of which investigates an object in the collection of the Palais Galliera with a problematic history in relation to issues of race, colonialism, or elitism.
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Concept: Laurent Cotta and Marco Pecorari, with the support of Miren Arzalluz
Exhibition Design: Justin Morin
Research Support: Antoine Bucher
Communication: Lisa Sarma and Margaux Brisson
Special Thanks to Morna Laing and Florence Leclerc Dickler