Haute Couture Meets Underground Art

Last November, the fashion designer Yeohlee Teng decided to transform the gritty subway platform beneath Bryant Park into a glitzy urban runway when previewing her new line during Fashion Week. The idea of fusing glam with grit proved so successful that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority decided to do it again this year.Tomorrow, as metal scaffolding and stark white canvas tents cloak Bryant Park in preparation for another week-long foray into high-end couture, the MTA plans to roll out its own line of fashion-forward accessories at a new exhibition, “Fashion Underground,” at Grand Central Terminal.Inspired by the objects and motifs associated with the city’s underground transit system, the show features nine items created by internationally known fashion designers such as Kenneth Cole and Judith Ripka to commemorate the subway’s centennial.In selecting designers for the exhibition, the MTA joined forces with the New York Transit Museum and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Finalists were invited to peruse the museum’s collection, housed in a 1930s subway station in Brooklyn, and gain inspiration from the museum’s many artifacts, which include vintage trains, wall mosaics, tokens, and old token booths.“We wanted to come up with an interesting array of accessories that use materials inspired by the subway and reflect the way designers perceive its different elements,” the executive director of the fashion council, Peter Arnold, said.The final products, which will be draped over nude mannequins in the Transit Museum’s gallery annex at Grand Central, range from MetroCard bearing gold necklaces to subway grate-inspired earrings.For one of the designers, Colette Malouf, whose charm necklace strings together subway tokens from different eras as a means of creating texture, the project was a way of reviving her childhood rides on the subway.“It seemed natural to work with tokens,” the designer, who has created accessories for the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez, said. “When I was growing up, we used to attach them to our denim jackets as funky charms.”Other designers were moved by the patterns and colors created by prosaic features of subway stations. Simon Alcantara, for instance, said that on his first visit to the Transit Museum, he was immediately attracted to a wrought-iron subway grate. His accessory takes the grate pattern and transforms it into earrings.“Usually people don’t associate the MTA with high fashion,” Mr. Alcantara said. “But this is a new trend in high fashion, to mix something that is very utilitarian or functional, like a subway grate, with luxury materials such as gold.”Mr. Alcantara may be right. While the exhibition may serve an aesthetic purpose, its purpose is utilitarian. Each item is being auctioned on eBay to raise funds for the Transit Museum’s collection and its educational services. Starting bids are at high-fashion prices, some ranging in the thousands of dollars.Whatever the revenue-raising success of the project, the museum’s director, Gabrielle Shubert, said the exhibit itself is a learning experience.“Our mission at the Transit Museum is to look at every aspect of the system, including the sociological and cultural impact,” she said. “And the exhibition is one way of unearthing a different perspective, one that people may have not considered before.”

Haute Couture Meets Underground Art

Haute Couture Meets Underground Art

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