NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it appears, is honing its skill at finding similarities between women with only superficial similarities. Its current Costume Institute exhibition, "Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations," for example, is a joint retrospective of two fashion luminaries who have little in common aside from the fact that they are both a) female designers and b) Italian. But despite their generational divide, Miuccia Prada's and Elsa Schiaparelli's careers share a certain absurdism, and the show works. We could say the same about Sunday's improbable conversation between 90-year-old textile tycoon Iris Apfel and 16-year-old blogging wunderkind Tavi Gevinson, "Good Taste/Bad Taste: The Evolution of Contemporary Chic."
That's not to say the two share opinions on fashion. Addressing an audience of fashionable women in every manner of strange hats (including one prominently featuring a lobster, an obvious nod to Schiaparelli), Gevinson was blond bangs and dark lipstick, the same angelic/gothic sweetness she showed us during her Fashion Week presentation of "Cadaver," her macabre short film about romance in a morgue. She's a thoughtful analyst who quotes artists like Cindy Sherman and John Waters, gathers her ideas carefully before speaking, and holds the microphone tightly with both hands. The seasoned Apfel, meanwhile, draped in grayish-ish brown Mongolian sheepskin, embellished with turquoise necklace, shoes, and eyeshadow, sharply tells her own stories and freely provides her opinions. The New Yorker's Judith Thurman provided some balance with her simple black top — as well as a few questions.
The two addressed all sorts of topics: Gevinson's penchant for vintage versus Apfel's early struggles to convince the world that it was okay to wear used clothes; Apfel's view that every designer works with a specific woman in mind versus Gevinson's insistence that clothing is universal. Gevinson equated feminism with freedom, while Apfel said that is was "bunk." And while Apfel wishes she could afford more of the streamlined, sculptural silhouettes of Ralph Rucci, one of Tavi's current favorites is the softly fluttering, California-inspired collections of Rodarte.
Their divide became more apparent in the different "evolutions" they spoke of. While Gevinson could divide her life into the oppression of middle school and the freedom of high school, Apfel spoke of a world before and after Balenciaga, and the decentralization of fashionable thinking from Paris. When Gevinson, who "became confident once I pretended I was and forced myself into wearing something I was shy about," asked if the same thing happened to Apfel, the nonagenarian replied, "I can’t remember that far back." (Although she does remember being "the first woman to wear blue jeans.")
Despite their marked (if predictable) differences, they recognized that their manner of dress was meant to attract what Iris called "the same ilk" — and Tavi called "a similar group of weirdos" — both emphasizing that the small tribes of people who get your style are the ones who truly matter, and everyone else's opinion is irrelevant. And together, they hashed a plan for the next Costume Institute show, one that would be based on the elderly fashion blog, Advanced Style.
"Fear of aging is sad and scary to me," Gevinson said. "I think John Waters said, first there were beatniks and then the hippies and then the punks, and right now I don't really think there's a counterculture like that. So the way to be rebellious now is —"
"To get old?" Thurman interjected.
"To get away from the fetishization of youth," Gevinson finished.
"That's brilliant," Apfel said. "There are so many, many women that go crazy about [aging] in a very bad way for their own being... It would be a very healing show... Let's sign on the dotted line."