A Harmony of Fugitive Color

By JAY COCKS

On a length of diaphanous cotton, larger than a stole, smaller than a shroud, there is the figure of a tiger, magisterial in its power, surreptitious in its impact. The cloth must be moved, draped just so and drawn at the proper angle to the light before the outline of the animal is even suggested. The effect is cunning, quixotic, magical, and knows no boundary in time. The cloth, in fact, dates only from the mid-20th century, but the tiger, fashioned from phantom stripes of fabric, was tie-dyed with supernal skill, millimeter by millimeter, by a craftsman whose techniques were passed down over 1,200 years. The lace of Chantilly seems, by comparison, fussy and overemphatic. That tiger prowls with the power of art.

So "Costumes of Royal India," of which this fabulous piece of cotton is just a small part, springs into New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art with a vitality and dignity well beyond that of most exhibitions of clothing. All is ravishment: a child's coat made of silver fabric embroidered with gold thread; a woman's costume of veil, tunic and pajamas that plays with sunset shades of gold and violet. Fashion and society are the prevailing standards that squeeze museum costume shows tight, but "Costumes of Royal India" celebrates an ongoing tradition--of craft, of coloration, of symbolic dress and functional wear. Diana Vreeland, who in her years as a fashion doyen coined a neat line about Indian dress ("Pink is the navy blue of India"), started to organize this show more than a year and a half ago, and her trademarks are abundant. There are atmospheric tapes of Indian court music, elaborate furniture, and the scent of a specially made Guerlain sandalwood to orchestrate the clothes. This kind of show-biz gilding draws the crowds, but the hues and density and drapings of the clothes, the impact of their easy and erotic majesty, will linger much longer than the perfume.

By their nature, most museum costume shows are retrospectives, evocations of some bygone era or long-spent style. "Royal India" may be the longest shadow of the imperial sunset, but the techniques this show celebrates--like tie-dying, brocading, hand embroidering and intricate weaving--are still practiced. The exhibit, which opens to the public on Dec. 20, contains some 150 separate costumes, but as Indian Curator Martand Singh points out, "there is not a piece of textile here that is not produced today." The costumes come from 16 former royal families, and a few had to be returned for use during the preparation of the exhibit. One of Singh's assistants was married in a bridal outfit with a veil embroidered in gold that looks, to a Western eye, like nothing so much as formal wear for a fairy-tale princess.

Small wonder that the fantasy of India swamped the reality for so many smitten Western voyagers. Ordinary rituals had an everyday storybook magic, and art, craft and libido all worked as one. Diamonds were crushed into pigment; rubies were used for adornment and pounded into aphrodisiacal potions. In such a context, the grandeur of these court clothes seems almost casual. It is impossible to resist the impact of a coat--cut for a maharajah who stood 6 ft. 9 in.--made of silk and interlined, for warmth, with rustling handmade rag paper. All that captures the eye. But what holds the imagination are the shapes, the folds and the colors, the cascades of fabric in a skirt that uses 300 yards of cotton to move over the wearer like a light wind or that spills around her, when she sits, like a mountain lake. The gold glitters, but what seduces are the accents of color that the gold picks up and reflects, like the green fragments of beetle wings that peek out of a 19th century man's coat. Gharara, billowing pants favored by both men and women, have a sensuality that could liven up any ready-to-wear runway in Paris, although a contemporary designer might look for certain practical modifications. Some of the gharara at the Met are so long and wide that they trail behind the wearer and have to be carried like the trains of wedding gowns.

Most of the clothes are ceremonial, although the occasion does not have to be grand. Some of the most elegant dresses are of indigo cotton, appliqued with gold, made to be worn during India's harvest festival in the late fall, when the dark of the sky is deepest. There are social nuances in every garment, highborn or not. A man's white cotton overblouse can be tied in 58 ways, each with its own social connotation. The knots at the waist of a courtesan's skirt could be so intricate that only she could undo them: fashion as a fail-safe device. A contemporary turban, worn by an ironmonger, shows in its coloration and style of wrapping the wearer's occupation, his residence and his marital status: fashion as calling card.

The exhibit's extraordinary range of colors, from the full lush tangerine to white that shines with the intensity of the noon sun on Himalayan snow, comes partly from Persia (where shades of muted pistachio and oleander pink originated), partly from the British raj (all those brown and khaki earth tones) and partly too from what Curator Singh calls "the fugitive color palette"--the homespun miracle that would occur when a villager, out of necessity, dyed and redyed the same piece of cloth. Serendipity and splendor then: fashion as tradition. Fashion, indeed, as the warp of the social fabric.

With reporting by Elizabeth Rudulph/New York