Visitors who come to Phoenix Art Museum specifically for “Barbie: A Cultural Icon” shouldn’t miss the opportunity to see the rest of the museum’s collection, but there’s one exhibition in particular they’ll want to see.
In conjunction with the traveling show, the museum has put together its own fashion exhibit, “The Power of Pink,” which will be on view through July 7 upstairs in the museum on the Fashion Design Mezzanine.
Helen Jean, the museum’s Jacquie Dorrance Curator of Fashion Design, says that creating an exhibit to complement the Barbie show was a given, but the approach was not.
“There were a couple different ways I thought about it,” she says. If Barbie’s going to be in our building, originally it was ‘Do we want to pull looks that represent Barbie style throughout the ages?’ but that’s really kind of the drive of the exhibition already. So then, I started thinking about the popularity of the color pink, and how Barbie’s got her own pink color, a specific Pantone pink, and it’s an incredible color. It’s a color that’s been used in so many ways throughout our lives, around the planet, and so that really became a great launchpad for an exhibition.”
Compared to last year’s stellar fashion exhibition featuring the designs of Geoffrey Beene, “The Power of Pink” is relatively small, fewer than 20 mannequins. But the power of pink means that even a smaller show packs a fashion punch.
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Two pink Chanel looks.
Jennifer Goldberg
The pieces are drawn both from the museum’s extensive fashion archives and on loan from other entities. From the museum’s collection, attendees can see items like a crisp wool Christian Dior suit from the 1950s; a sleek sequined Norman Norell ballgown from the 1970s; and a 1980s Valentino evening gown in which a long, straight pink skirt is topped by a sequined harlequin top with feathers. One of the show’s surprises: Post Malone’s pink sequined suit from the 2019 Grammys.
“The Power of Pink” is a representation both of the many varieties of pink and its staying power in fashion.
“I wanted to represent as many different time periods as I could, and different versions of pink — we’ve got pale, blush baby pinks; bright fuchsia hot pinks; shocking pink; and deeper, more raspberry pinks,” Jean says. “And then, I want our audiences to connect with the different looks, so I also wanted to try to create more youthful looks, more grand evening wear looks and more playful party looks to try to create a celebration of the color in as many different ways with different time periods, celebrating different designers, and then as always, keeping an eye on who gave what object to the museum, because that’s an important part of our stories as well.”
Jean, along with Karan Feder, the curator of the “Barbie: A Cultural Icon” exhibition, will participate in a discussion at the museum at 7 p.m. on March 6 titled “Thinking Pink: Science and History,” in which they will be joined by ASU professors Dr. Kevin McGraw, who will address animal coloration and how those visual signals evolve in feathers and scales, and Teresa Devine, whose area of expertise is color history and its influential use in modern game design. The event costs $5 to attend.
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Installation view of “The Power of Pink,” 2024. Phoenix Art Museum.
Airi Katsuta
So what is the power of pink? Jean says it has power for each of us in the different ways we use it and wear it.
“I find when we’re thinking about pink in different time periods, it gets such strong reactions and it has such strong meanings where other colors don’t seem to have that same mythology tied to them and that same lore that goes with them,” she says. “Pink has such an interesting ability to draw people to it; it’s such a bright, bold color. And yet it’s also able to cause such rifts between people. And of course the color isn’t creating any of that. We’re creating these emotions around it. But it’s really fascinating how over time it’s had such a polarizing effect — it’s only for men, it’s only for women, it’s only for children, it’s only for this group — when in the beginning it was just a highly fashionable color because it was bright, it was new and it was hard to come by, and that makes it luxurious and desirable.
“So that’s the power that I see in the color, that it has had so many different meanings. It’s the color that represents youthfulness and babies, or it represents blushing brides or it represents audacity and outrageousness, or it represents courage or it represents identity. It’s got a strength and a power that other colors don’t seem to possess. We’re not lining up and freaking out over green.”