Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace, 

Speaker 2 (00:00:02):
It's actually harder to find a straight male designer than it is to find the gay male designers. 

Speaker 1 (00:00:21):
Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Adam McFarland, curatorial assistant for fashion arts and textiles. For you personally, do you think knowing that a lot of these people were gay, did that influence you interest in even becoming involved in fashion? 

Speaker 2 (00:00:57):
See, I was a very naive kid, so I don't think that played much of a role for me because I just always, I didn't think about it. It wasn't something that was interest to me. What was funny is I started, so I do have an undergraduate degree in fashion design, and that's kind of where I started and I got into fashion design in the fifth grade, and I have very distinct memories of it because a friend of mine got me into sketching out fashion. I still have that notebook of mine designs from fifth grade, which are horribly nineties and awful. And what was somewhat ironic about it is we were both young kids, and this is in a time period where you didn't kids in the fifth grade, there was no inkling of being gay or straight. I mean, at least from an outward perspective. I mean, I guess I can look back and say, well, I can see that I probably was gay then too. The 

Speaker 1 (00:02:05):
Writing was on the wall, 

Speaker 2 (00:02:06):
The writing was on the wall, and I was doing fashion design, so perhaps it really was. But what was funny is years later my friend and I had drifted apart, but we actually both ended up coming out as gay 

Speaker 1 (00:02:17):
Years 

Speaker 2 (00:02:18):
Later. So perhaps it is something that's genetically involved. What is that? 

Speaker 1 (00:02:22):
That's what I find so funny. I mean, it's like I was talking to you earlier about this and just sort of going like, well, why 

Speaker 1 (00:02:30):
Does fashion, why is it sort of dominated by gay men in a way? It's this weird field that even I feel like there's a certain sort of expectation for the arts to be pretty gay already. But if I think about, say sort of the reason, and I don't know if this is true, there's a lot of just speculation here, but if I think about why there's so many gay actors, I would feel like, well, it probably doesn't hurt that a lot of these people have been training to pretend to be something else for a long time. You get very good at pretending, and I kind of wonder if like, oh, well that makes sense that you maybe sort of become an actor in this way, 

Speaker 2 (00:03:13):
Perhaps. I don't know. 

Speaker 1 (00:03:15):
But I don't know exactly what the link is with fashion. 

Speaker 2 (00:03:17):
So in thinking about it, and for anyone listening, you'll have to forgive me, I don't know the name of the study, but there was a study years ago that did brain scans and essentially showed that gay male brains are more similar to straight female brains, and female brains are more similar to straight male brains. And so there is an actual physical or physiological connection between gay men and straight women, which 

Speaker 1 (00:03:49):
Is obvious if you just look at friendships. 

Speaker 2 (00:03:53):
It's 

Speaker 1 (00:03:53):
Not uncommon for, obviously gay men have lots of straight female friends usually, 

Speaker 2 (00:03:59):
And so it kind of stands to reason. Then you have to ask the question, why do straight women love fashion? What is it that draws us to it? And for me, I think I have an aesthetic mind, so I want to create visually beautiful things, and fashion was the medium that I chose. I'm not a great painter or a great illustrator, but I can do great things on the body. And then I think some of it too is a way of shaping the body. And I do women's wear, which I think a lot of gay men do tend to design for women. And I think it's, it's play for me. It's something that I get to envision a woman in the way I want to see her. 

Speaker 1 (00:04:53):
And just as you're saying this all too, the idea of as fashion is an extension of identity too is kind of coming out too. I'm thinking of the way that we obviously use fashion to express something internal as well. This idea of that being another way that really I think links to of also even the way, especially stereotypical gender roles of women being allowed to be more expressive of themselves basically. And that comes across in fashion choices as well. Men's fashion is generally pretty limited in how expressive it can be. Just look at any award ceremony, red carpet event and the range of female fashion expression is on one level and then the men like, oh, you might have a colorful pocket square. 

Speaker 2 (00:05:47):
Well, and the thing that I would be curious to see is that trend actually ebbs and flows. We know our current fashion, it's definitely very, very boring for men, particularly when you think about, one of the things I've done as the both gay male friend and the fashion gay male friend is my straight male friends get married and I have to go with them to help pick out their tux because they don't know the difference between a pizza lapel and a notch to lapel and a wing tip collar and a spread collar. So our choices are a lot more mundane, 

Speaker 2 (00:06:29):
A lot more subtle. But when you look back to the 1960s and the peacock revolution, all men or straight could wear super tight pants and super bright patterns, bright colors, and while there certainly were hyper-masculine guys that would call those people out as being gay for their appearance only overall society said that's okay for that short amount of time. When you go back into 18th century France, men were wearing a leopard print velvet. And there was one example I've seen, I believe at the Kyoto Costume Institute that's got little hearts all over it, and they were certainly on the more extreme side of fashion even at that time, but it was acceptable in certain scenarios. So you could go to the court and be wearing a pretty outlandish outfit, but then if you went in that same time period, if you went to England where it was much more subdued and if you were a masculine man, you wore gray and brown and drab colors, if you wore those same fringe fashions in England at the time, you would definitely be labeled as effeminate. 

Speaker 1 (00:07:56):
Right? Yeah. And I mean that's always a part of, I guess all fashion though. It's fair to remember that. I mean, we do this every day of what you consider appropriate for one location and what is considered appropriate where, I mean, it's just the idea of even wearing something too formal. If I showed up wearing a tuxedo today to work, everyone would be giving me very strange looks, 

Speaker 2 (00:08:23):
Right? Absolutely. 

Speaker 1 (00:08:24):
So I mean, that's something we all deal with of what we deem appropriate. This is something because I live downtown and have to walk my dogs outside, I'm much more comfortable just walking out into a city street wearing basically pajamas than I probably would be out of a sort of sense of necessity. But then if I run into somebody, actually, I was at the park on Saturday and I ran into Ainsley and Nathaniel there, and I was so mortified because of what I was wearing, but I'm just like, to me, it's basically an extension of my living room that this is part of my daily routine. I walk my dogs to the park, we go to the dog park, I hang out. I don't care if any of the people there see me wearing gym shorts and this t-shirt, but suddenly my world's collided and I felt very self-conscious of what I was wearing. 

Speaker 2 (00:09:13):
Well, and that's an important distinction in looking at every gay man is not the same because as two gay males sitting here, I am one of those that yeah, maybe in high school I would've done that, but I would be mortified to go out. And it's not that I have to look like I'm trying hard, but I'm still going to go out in a nice pair of jeans and a t-shirt that looks nice and shoes and socks that coordinate. 

Speaker 1 (00:09:42):
No, yeah, you're much more aligned with my husband in this who regularly looks at what I'm about to walk out the door and is like, are you seriously going to go out like that? I'm like, 

Speaker 2 (00:09:51):
Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (00:09:51):
I don't care. I don't mind. He's sort of mortified by what I will choose to, and again, I wouldn't put in a position suddenly I will feel shame for what have I done? 

Speaker 2 (00:10:07):
We all have those moments. I have those moments where I come into work and I've paired together a pair of slacks and a dress shirt and I look at it and I'm like, this is the worst color combination. What was I thinking? 

Speaker 1 (00:10:21):
Well, I guess for you though, the pressure must feel super on, or do you feel that? 

Speaker 2 (00:10:27):
Well, I think the struggle with growing up in the nineties for any of us and eighties and nineties is fashion didn't fit. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (00:10:40):
That's true. 

Speaker 2 (00:10:41):
I remember so many things that were just two sizes too big, and I'm a small person anyway, so even a small sometimes can drown me in fashion. And I've been able over the past few years to realize that I want, I look better in something that's tailored, 

Speaker 1 (00:11:00):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:11:00):
I have a sewing machine and I a designer, so I don't make my own clothes, but I can go to the store, buy something and tailor it in. And so for me, that pressure is knowing not only putting on something that looks good, but that fits my body 

Speaker 1 (00:11:18):
Is 

Speaker 2 (00:11:18):
Part of it. So I prefer to wear jeans and a t-shirt, but I wear a t-shirt that fits properly that doesn't have a ton of excess fabric around it. And I think that's something that is how I interpret looking good is looking my best. It doesn't have to be the best clothing, but it can be what I know I look good in versus what makes me look sloppy. God, I 

Speaker 1 (00:11:46):
Had never really thought about that, about the nineties fashion having such a detrimental effect on probably men our age. But 

Speaker 2 (00:11:56):
You're right, 

Speaker 1 (00:11:57):
And this is again, something my husband regularly has. Those pants are too big for you. You can't wear that. 

Speaker 2 (00:12:04):
Oh, saggy crotch is a thing. 

Speaker 1 (00:12:07):
And it's really funny because I totally had not noticed it until I saw it through his eyes and having grown up in a different country and he did not have the same sense. He's always just like, Americans, you guys wear your pants so they're too big on everybody. You can't see anybody's butt. And I'm like, first I was a little resistant and now I'm totally looking around. I'm like, oh my God, it's true. Everyone's pants are too big constantly. I'm looking around and be like, that's right. It is an epidemic. 

Speaker 2 (00:12:42):
Well, and it's something that in many ways is uniquely American because other certainly styles change and you have the big shoulders of the eighties and those kinds of things, but Americans, particularly since the late eighties and really up until the early to mid two thousands, it there's not a comprehension of tailoring. I lived in England for a year and certainly just like any country, there's a wide variety of fashion sense, but overall, if you go to a British company like Top Shop or Top Man or I'm trying to, any of these companies originating out of Europe's, they're going to run smaller sizes with the anticipation of it actually fitting you. Whereas an American company, it may say small, but really it's a European medium 

Speaker 1 (00:13:44):
Because 

Speaker 2 (00:13:44):
They anticipate that we want it baggy. And I don't know if we just haven't communicated well, but I know a lot mean particularly a lot of straight men, I think unless you're a muscle bound guy, you don't want to show off your figure. If you've got a beer gut, you think wearing a tighter shirt is going to show off my beer gut. 

Speaker 1 (00:14:06):
That brings up another idea too, about even that way of presenting, and I remember listening to Savage Love podcast at one point, and somebody was sort of critiquing this sort of very revealing female Halloween costumes that are like every year everyone's laughing at the silliness of all of these things. And Dan Savage was like, he's like, Hey, go easy on him. This is straight pride. Basically, this is the one night a year that straight people get to be really straight ladies at least can dress really revealing and nobody's going to judge them. And you imagined a man in that same skimpy costume. Your read on them is that, oh, they're gay. Right, 

Speaker 2 (00:14:56):
Which I was just thinking of that as you were saying, it is the only equivalent is the slutty guy, and yeah, he's going to be, 

Speaker 1 (00:15:07):
But of course, what is the common denominator here is both gay men and straight women are trying to attract men, right? 

Speaker 2 (00:15:15):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (00:15:16):
And so if you are trying to attract women wearing skimpy clothing doesn't necessarily do the trick. Correct. Or maybe it does for some women, but probably not as many of them. 

Speaker 2 (00:15:29):
Yeah, it's going to be the Samantha of the Sex and the City group that wants the half naked man, but Right. 

Speaker 1 (00:15:37):
Yeah. So there's that weird thing of they're also following what the culture has taught them is how we present. So if a man does wear something that is perceived as too clingy or too tight, the first thing that we go to is like, oh, that looks really gay. 

Speaker 2 (00:16:00):
Yeah. Well, what's interesting is I think there's been some shift in that from the early two thousands with the coining of the term metrosexual rule, and that was I think the straight man's way of breaking into that 

Speaker 1 (00:16:16):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:16:16):
That it 

Speaker 1 (00:16:18):
Wasn't 

Speaker 2 (00:16:20):
Something that puts you in the category of gay because you were wearing clingy clothes because you were wearing one of my biggest pet peeves with the American men's fashion. And gay men do this too. It's just what they've been taught is they'll have a button up shirt and they'll have the top button or two unbuttoned and you can see their undershirt underneath it. Men don't ever have your undershirt showing ever. And it doesn't matter if it's a regular t-shirt or a purposely designed undershirt. Don't ever do that. 

Speaker 1 (00:16:57):
Why does this bother you so much? 

Speaker 2 (00:16:58):
Because it's not supposed to. An undershirt is not supposed to be visible. 

Speaker 1 (00:17:01):
It's an 

Speaker 2 (00:17:02):
Undershirt. 

Speaker 1 (00:17:03):
It's so rigid. That's such a rigid read of what's possible with fashion. 

Speaker 2 (00:17:08):
But that is if you go to any other country that wears our style of clothing, it's so unfashionable. And I think that to me, the metrosexual was kind of one of those things where you could wear your top button or two unbuttoned on your dress shirt without a shirt underneath it, and no one looked at you like you were crazy 

Speaker 1 (00:17:32):
Or 

Speaker 2 (00:17:32):
That, I mean, you weren't underdressed. The function of an undershirt is to collect your sweat. That is why you wear an undershirt. So if you're going to wear an undershirt because you sweat a lot, it's summer, you're walking outside a lot, go for it, but have your shirt buttoned up to where you can't see it. Wear a deep. I know. I think still to this day, straight men and some gay men think that wearing a deep V shirt is gay is not, it's functional. But 

Speaker 1 (00:18:04):
I like that though, that and some gay men think that it's too gay, which is this thing that drives me crazy, but that is a real thing. 

Speaker 2 (00:18:11):
Yes. Oh, I have plenty of things that I don't wear. I feel like they're too gay and I'm gay. Man, isn't 

Speaker 1 (00:18:17):
That bizarre? I mean, 

Speaker 2 (00:18:18):
That's how, 

Speaker 1 (00:18:19):
I guess that kind of stuff. I mean, I can't remember who I was talking to recently and they were kind of asking me, well, do you think things are better than they were? I was like, well, obviously it's like, yeah, obviously acceptance has never been greater. Yeah, obviously it is good, 

Speaker 2 (00:18:41):
But 

Speaker 1 (00:18:41):
That kind of stuff where it's like, I don't want to do this because it's perceived as too gay. It is perceived as exactly the thing I am. It's like my husband will say that sometimes like, oh, he's like, oh, he's like, no, no, that's too gay. With clothes, especially, we will be shopping. He'll be like, should I get this? And I'm like, sure, go. And then he'd be like, nah, it's too gay. And I was like, well, 

Speaker 2 (00:19:03):
It's probably not gayer 

Speaker 1 (00:19:04):
Than marrying me. Right. 

Speaker 2 (00:19:06):
That's kind of the height of gayness. Well, but I think the one thing that is different is someone can look at you too, and unless if they don't know you, they can see you're both wearing wedding rings, but they don't know if you're married to each other or married's, not Now, if you're standing next to each other, you have your writing bands on and one or both of you is wearing very flamboyant clothing, lavender or super bright florals and things like that, then you start to really push yourself out there and you're starting to potentially broadcast yourself. 

Speaker 1 (00:19:46):
No, I definitely, that's true. I mean, here in Cincinnati, 

Speaker 2 (00:19:49):
At 

Speaker 1 (00:19:49):
Least, if we eat out at a restaurant, almost always the waiter will start by asking separate checks, almost always. And I didn't pay attention to it much until I ate at a restaurant with a female friend, and they would always ask one check when they came because they assume we were a couple. 

Speaker 2 (00:20:09):
The only time I've had it different is a super fancy restaurant where they assume why would two straight men be coming to a high-end fancy restaurant together? But yes, generally any standard sit down restaurant, 

Speaker 1 (00:20:23):
But in a city like Miami, I've had almost always, they assume we're gay. 

Speaker 2 (00:20:29):
Right. 

Speaker 1 (00:20:30):
Because it's just way more, well, 

Speaker 2 (00:20:31):
And I just assume any, even New Yorker probably, 

Speaker 1 (00:20:35):
Yeah, I 

Speaker 2 (00:20:35):
Hate to say it, but San Francisco as you're stereotype of the gay city. I mean, I feel like Miami and San Francisco are your hits there. But 

Speaker 1 (00:20:44):
Yeah, it's just funny. I can always, and it's one of those things where it's like, it does not bother me deeply where I'm like, oh, how dare they? But it is just this weird little thing that I always go like, huh. 

Speaker 2 (00:20:57):
But it's probably not based on the clothing you're wearing, it's just based on your two men at a restaurant together. Maybe they see your rings, maybe they don't. I don't know. 

Speaker 1 (00:21:04):
Yeah. I don't know how much of it is based on how much we both felt a need to hide in the past and to stay in the closet that basically you've developed this sort of personality that is perceived as straight acting as it goes by on hookup apps, that idea of being straight acting and I don't know. 

Speaker 2 (00:21:30):
Well, I mean, I feel like we could get into some really deep discussions of the psychology of it, because I know for me, in terms of what I wear, we went, a group of us went to the FC Cincinnati soccer match this past weekend, which was their pride night. And one of my friends suggested wearing your rainbow gear, and I don't own anything Rainbow. And they had brought some various rainbow related temporary tattoos and everyone was putting rainbow tattoos on them. And I don't want a rainbow tattoo. And for me, it is an aspect of I don't feel the need to be ashamed of being gay, but I also don't feel like the opposite of ashamed is pride. I think it's somewhere in the middle, and I don't need to express that with the clothing I wear. There are plenty of other ways you can tell I'm gay, I don't need to wear a rainbow for you to know that. 

Speaker 1 (00:22:33):
Yeah, it is true. Was it Danielle and Doug who had all the rainbow stuff? 

Speaker 2 (00:22:37):
Kristin? 

Speaker 1 (00:22:38):
Oh, okay. I was going to say, I remember Danielle and Doug when I first started dating Hoffa, they were like, come to the Pride Parade and they had flags and everything, and both of us were like, I don't own any rainbow stuff. How are these two straight people have way more rainbow gear than 

Speaker 2 (00:22:58):
I 

Speaker 1 (00:22:58):
Do? 

Speaker 2 (00:22:59):
And I think that's kind of what in some ways, what the Pride Month and Pride parades have become is equally about straight allies of the gay community. Is there one time to be as equally flamboyant 

Speaker 2 (00:23:15):
As the gay stereotype? And dude, I generally can't stand the pride events because that's just, and I think it's, again, I have no problem with pride events. I think it's a great aspect in terms of looking at our history and that this has become something that is to be celebrated, identities to be celebrated. But I think for me, it's something that I don't feel the need to wear my cutoff t-shirt with a unicorn on it and my Daisy Duke shorts and run around the street. But I think it does give people the opportunity to do that and know that they're in the midst of a crowd of the same people. 

Speaker 1 (00:24:01):
Right. Well, I kind of wonder though, now again, I'm kind of going back to trying to bring it back to fashion a little bit when you were talking about women's fashion and the way that gay men designers have tended to gravitate towards women's fashion, and I wondered if there is a little bit something about that that's even related to the kind of psychology behind drag and that idea of, I don't know, as far as I understand it, again, who knows. I'm sure there are smarter people with better reads on this stuff, but for me, I've always thought of drag as being this sort of way that gay men can kind of have permission to be sort of that flamboyant personality that they've been told not to be their whole lives. 

Speaker 2 (00:24:47):
Well, and that's an interesting thing because I tend to agree with you because drag is really meant to be a hyperbole. It is something that it's, most of the time, unless there has been a more recent push in the drag community to include transgender, and historically those have been very divided things because a transgender woman is a woman is going to dress purely as a woman, wear the same clothes as the women on the street, the same makeup as women on the street. Whereas drag queens are in traditional historical sense, are gay men dressed as women, but in extreme fashions, in extreme makeup generally as well. They don't want to be feminine, but they're not trying to pass as women on the street. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:42):
Yeah, generally. Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:25:44):
Generally I should 

Speaker 1 (00:25:44):
Say, yeah, there are sort of different sects who are almost sort of going for a completely, I want to fool you that I am a cis woman who is. So 

Speaker 2 (00:25:57):
Those are things that have modified over time. 

Speaker 1 (00:26:01):
But I think you're correct. The vast majority of drag queens are out to sort of create this almost cartoon character of 

Speaker 2 (00:26:10):
A woman, someone like Trixie Mattel, who literally 

Speaker 1 (00:26:14):
Looks like a Barbie 

Speaker 2 (00:26:16):
Is trying to pull off this plastic look. So I think that is, and I agree with you, I think kind of the same idea of gay male actors, drag is a way to embrace all those things that maybe you're toning down a little bit, or maybe I am only recently getting into things like drag race. I've never really been a fan of going to drag shows, but watching the current season with Cameron Michaels, who as a drag queen goes for that more hyper-feminine, semi more realistic, maybe not a full idea fooling someone, but definitely I'm more on the sensual feminine side versus the crazy outlandish, particularly within her makeup. But as a male is muscular tattooed talks lower. And so for him may be a way, and I'm putting words in his mouth, but may as a gay male be a way to express those feminine ideals that maybe he doesn't feel the need to be on an everyday basis, but this is his kind of escape. Yeah. I mean, 

Speaker 1 (00:27:36):
I can think of times where when I was a kid, anyone who knows me knows that I do, I love to imitate people and do impressions, and I can easily launch into these characters. And I was no different as a kid. And I remember being really obsessed with, this is one of those things where we're talking about, this didn't seem gay at the time, but in hindsight I think there's a lot of things that are like that. In hindsight, this seems very, very telling, right? 

Speaker 2 (00:28:08):
I have a few of those 

Speaker 1 (00:28:08):
Stories. So I was really obsessed with Jack from two seven at the time was the show she was currently on. And I would do impressions of Jack A and I remember being sort of chastised by an uncle for doing that. And it was one of the first times I was like, whoa, what's going on here? Why are you not? Because I think my immediate family was much more supportive and was probably more entertained by it. But that was one of those times that I remember, okay, this is not appropriate in all situations, so I have to button up. 

Speaker 2 (00:28:49):
Well, and perhaps for me with fashion, I remember also with the same friend that got me into fashion design, we were both into musicals, 

Speaker 1 (00:28:58):
Surprise, 

Speaker 2 (00:29:00):
I blame my parents for that one, but we would hang out after school and we would put on something like Phantom of the Opera and we would each pick apart. So each time we were singing, I would have a designated role to sing and he would have a designated role to sing. And I remember at one point, I think when I was singing the role of Christine and wrapped a skirt around me, of course I'm singing a female part. I've got to be in a skirt. But perhaps I think that to me was so early on that then as I started to figure out I was gay, I started to push those things is no, that's what they're expecting me to do. So I think perhaps as a teenager when I started to realize I was gay, kind of went to the other extreme. 

Speaker 1 (00:29:52):
You don't want to present in that way. Yeah. Well, I was thinking we could go down into the collection and into storage and look at some clothes. Can we do that 

Speaker 2 (00:30:01):
Now? Absolutely. Let's get 

Speaker 1 (00:30:03):
Going. Awesome. Alright, so we are in costume storage now. Show me that gay stuff. 

Speaker 2 (00:30:19):
Okay. Well, we were talking on the way over that it's actually harder to find a straight male designer than it is to find the gay male designers. So in storage, it's pretty easy to track down some pieces done by gay men. So where we are in storage right now is a section that is for women's dress and for the 20th century, they're sorted in our storage by designers. So it makes it quite easy to find. And one of the kind of illustrious people is Charles James, and he was known for these very structural garments. And so we have one that is so large that it just sits kind of on its own pedestal out from everything else. And it was known, the one that we have is known as the lampshade dress, 

Speaker 1 (00:31:09):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:31:09):
It's a very form fitting black dress on the top. And then at the bottom is this very large flounce that is highly structured and goes out a couple feet on either direction, kind of reminiscent of the 18th century dress styles with the hips that are really wide 

Speaker 1 (00:31:28):
But much 

Speaker 2 (00:31:28):
Lower but lower and very form fitting on the top. So very accentuating the women's figure. And a lot of designers of that time period, the gay designers in particular wanted to enhance the woman's natural physique. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:44):
Yeah, yeah. I mean this is an image too. I wasn't actually until you uncovered it here, it's sort of covered up. I am assuming since it can't be in the sort of closed storage areas with the rest of 'em, you have to kind of keep it covered. This is 

Speaker 2 (00:31:58):
That. Yes, it's got a protective cover over it, so it protects from light whenever you've got the overhead lights on and protects from dust. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:06):
Yeah. But when you started talking about it, I was like, I wasn't exactly sure which piece, and then I saw, I was like, oh, that one, it is one that we use a lot. I feel like when we use images from the fashion collection, it's a piece that gets put out there a lot. So it was a pretty famous image to me. 

Speaker 2 (00:32:20):
Yeah, it is definitely one. And we'll go down a little bit further to our section of Christian Dior, and he was another one who introduced what is called the New Look in 1947. And it's something that with world I, there were restrictions on fashion. So silhouettes changed. They became smaller to accommodate war rations when they ended, Christian Dior introduced this fashion where it was women that had very, very tightly cinched waist and very, very full skirts. And so we have things like this navy blue dress with gold polka dots, and if I pull it out to look at it, it's got a fairly tight waist, and then the skirt has all these gathers and pleats around it so that when you put a petticoat underneath, it poofs out a whole bunch and creates that hourglass figure that math has shown is the ideal ratios. I'm going to blame it on that math 

Speaker 1 (00:33:26):
Has shown. It's one of those things where people are always dividing, it probably involves the golden rectangle. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:33):
That's what I always, it is. 

Speaker 1 (00:33:35):
I'm always dubious about that stuff, just like, does this really mean anything where you take, I've looked at so many pictures of, I don't know, the Parthenon with some spiral on it, and I'm like, I don't know what any of this means. Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:33:49):
Well, like I said, it's an excuse, but to make a woman look. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:55):
And then some other stuff that we've got down this aisle are some pieces by Steven Burrows, who I was talking about that is an African-American designer and a gay designer, and he was known for using this jersey knit fabric and chiffons and really light flowy fabrics that would move well on the dance floor. So this is a jacket that goes over, a dress goes over a skirt, and if I just kind of lightly wave it in the wind, it moves and dances in the wind. And it was, I think for him, and this is putting words in his mouth, but I feel like a lot of it was both perhaps being gay, but also being a black man and embracing certain aspects of black culture and dance being one of those. And he may disagree with me, but that's my interpretation. 

Speaker 1 (00:34:53):
He didn't really necessarily want us to be talking about it in this way at all. 

Speaker 2 (00:34:57):
And Steven Burrows is a still living designer as well. I should point that out. So if he's listening to this, 

Speaker 1 (00:35:04):
I was talking about this with some of the docents too, about probably maybe at that same workshop I keep talking about, but I was like, artists can be wrong about their work too. 

Speaker 2 (00:35:14):
Oh, absolutely. 

Speaker 1 (00:35:16):
It's like you don't have to just because an artist tells you this is what this is about, you don't have to believe them. And I think one example too of that, that I always use is Grant Wood when talking about American Gothic would sometimes say that it was not ironic that it was very sincere. And then other times say that like, oh no, it's very ironic. And it really just seems to depend on who he was talking to of what he told them about the painting. Well, 

Speaker 2 (00:35:44):
It makes me start to think what pieces in our collection do we have that perhaps could fit into that model of fashion? Campy? 

Speaker 1 (00:35:52):
I mean, I'm standing here next to this thing covered in pink flowers, so I have no idea what that is, but 

Speaker 2 (00:35:57):
So a lot of what we're looking at now is the designer bill blast, but in looking at particularly our collection of it, there's feathers, there's pink, there's flowers sewn on, really cheap looking flowers, sewn on to jacket, some roughly ounces. So it is a bit on the campy side. There's also, I think one of our best pieces from him is this snake skin jacket that has basically US Navy buttons on it. It's that sailor style. And the designer Jean Paul Guttier in the nineties did a lot of that same kind of stuff. And it is that in some ways is that campy play on the, is the masculine sailor really all that masculine? 

Speaker 1 (00:36:44):
Right, right, right. Yeah. This is the stripe thing here is that, 

Speaker 2 (00:36:49):
Well, these are both Bill blast. So this is a blouse. We only have one goer in the collection, which we can go look at if you would like. 

Speaker 1 (00:36:55):
Yeah, sure. That's the one that was actually just on view not too long ago. 

Speaker 2 (00:36:58):
So it was just on view, and it's our first piece by goer in the collection. It is a knit dress that is printed with a female figure with a bikini on. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:11):
Yeah, I mean it's almost like 

Speaker 2 (00:37:12):
It literally the itsy bitsy, teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini is what it is. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:17):
But it's hilarious too because it's in some ways so silly that I'm thinking of the aprons that have the bikini lady printed on them. It's 

Speaker 2 (00:37:28):
Virtually exactly taking that into high fashion. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:31):
But then it's like he knows exactly how much to mess with it. To elevate it just a little bit. I mean, goer, again, I'm not a fashion expert by any means, but he's a person who always is playing with those things that are just silly enough and then manipulating them just enough to give them this new edge to it that brings in something different. So here he's taken that polka dot pattern from the polka dot bikini, and it's like all over it. It's kind of cutting through that design too. So it's also messing with the idea of the illusion of it. It defeats it at the same time. 

Speaker 2 (00:38:16):
And I mean, he uses those dots in different colors to form positive and negative space. 

Speaker 1 (00:38:22):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:38:22):
You're kind of playing with what is the body and what is the 

Speaker 1 (00:38:27):
Form, the sort of negative space cuts through the center of the design. When we were just looking at it, it looked like there's a shape almost missing from the center of the body. So it's not letting that illusion totally happen. It's both there and not there at the same time, which is really interesting. 

Speaker 2 (00:38:48):
Well, and next to the goer pieces are pieces by Rudy Gerrick, which we've been expanding on our collection there. And so these I think tend to be, I mean they're pretty garish in some ways, but pretty subtle and are more on the feminine side. So we do have one that is silver lame with some gold running through it. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:14):
This is the one that always makes me think of lawn chairs. 

Speaker 2 (00:39:18):
It is a little bit that way. It is woven bands of fabric. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:22):
Yeah, it looks so much like, yeah, like a lawn chair, like a summery lawn chair, 

Speaker 2 (00:39:26):
But a gay lawn chair. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:28):
Well, 

Speaker 2 (00:39:28):
Yeah, pretty gay lawn chair. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:29):
Yeah, the lame, the sort of gold and silver of it is definitely something. But again, it's kind of in that same vein of that we were talking about goer taking something kind of campy of that apron or something that's printed with a body on it and then sort of elevating it by just manipulating one element of it, like the fabric or something. 

Speaker 2 (00:39:53):
Well, so in this aisle, I guess must be the gay aisle, because across the way is Halston who actually not only was a famous gay designer, but he is one of the designers that died of AIDS in the 1980s and the AIDS crisis, which hit the fashion world really hard. And I would say his design aesthetic generally wasn't what we would think of as gay looking. It was pretty straightforward fashions. Other designers kind of had similar aesthetics, but he had a really amazing understanding of how fabric drapes on a body. So a lot of the pieces that we're seeing hung up in storage are very structured pieces, but in the boxes that have pieces that are knitwear, knitwear is we store flats because it can sag over time. If we put it on a hanger, if I were to pull that out and put it on a mannequin, they clinging to the body and drape really well. So he really understood a woman's body, even though he never experienced it himself. Never experienced, can I say that? 

Speaker 1 (00:41:09):
I mean, I guess we don't know mean maybe, who knows? Maybe he had some experiences perhaps, but probably not his primary entrance. Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:41:17):
I think we can assume that he didn't necessarily have certain experiences with a woman's body, but he knew how a woman's body looked and wanted to create pieces that were very elegant. So we do have pictures on the outside of the boxes, and you can kind of see things like the black dress up here that drapes around the body, and they would oftentimes literally drape around the body. So we would use the dress form and drape it around the form to create a shape. We do have the cute piggy pajamas. 

Speaker 1 (00:41:52):
Those are also Halston. 

Speaker 2 (00:41:53):
These are also Halston. I don't know the story behind these, but they're a pair of pajamas that have cute little piggies on them 

Speaker 1 (00:42:01):
All 

Speaker 2 (00:42:02):
Over them. 

Speaker 1 (00:42:02):
That is crazy. Yeah, that's definitely kind of the most over the top thing in here that I'm looking at, probably. I mean, I'm only seeing the edges of things, so it's a little hard to judge necessarily. What did you have? I mean, those feathers on this one are pretty, 

Speaker 2 (00:42:15):
Yeah, we have some feathers, we have some beating, but for the most part, he was a little bit more on the subtle. But that side, 

Speaker 1 (00:42:22):
Just getting back to that idea of those designers that really gernreich, we were talking about this that really want to sort of accentuate women's forms and really make them beautiful, I think we're talking about that kind of friendship between straight women and gay men. That's always sort of been there. And I think there is this reverence that gay men have towards women that we just really love women in this other way that's not romantically, but there's also this, maybe it's a sort of mutual understanding of not being taken seriously 

Speaker 2 (00:43:01):
Perhaps. I mean, I think that's definitely some of it, I think for me as well is I have no interest in wearing women's clothes, but I like them and I want to explore them. And this is kind of a way 

Speaker 1 (00:43:14):
To, 

Speaker 2 (00:43:17):
And again, I'm aesthetically minded, so I want to make something look its best. So we've looked at a lot of women's wear. I wondered if we could finish off with some men's wear. Yeah, sure, 

Speaker 1 (00:43:27):
Sure. 

Speaker 2 (00:43:27):
So we're in our men's wear section now. We don't have a huge collection of men's wear, but we have some really great pieces. And I wanted to start with the earlier stuff with the 18th century, and we have some really great examples of some late 18th, early 19th century men's court fashions. And we actually know that they were purchased in 1850s in France to be worn as theater costume. And they were worn by, it was an actor, very famous stage actor in the 19th century who ended up retiring and living out the end of his life in Cincinnati. And when you look at these, there's two in particular that are these velvets. One of them currently looks kind of orange, but it actually originally, if you kind of peek under where 

Speaker 1 (00:44:21):
It 

Speaker 2 (00:44:21):
Wasn't exposed to light, it actually used to be a bright, vivid red kind of a fire engine red color, and then is covered with silver. It has a lot of silver embroidery around the front and sides, which is part of how we know it would've likely been produced in France because somewhere like England, that would've been way too much for them and a wee bit gay to have that much gold on you. And then another one that's velvet, and it has embroidered flowers and lace cuffs on it. So it's something that wouldn't necessarily outright peg you as gay, but it definitely was a way a gay man with wealth could express his aesthetic. 

Speaker 1 (00:45:11):
What part of the 19th century are we talking about here as far as years? 

Speaker 2 (00:45:16):
So they would've been originally produced in the late 1790s or early 18 hundreds. So 

Speaker 1 (00:45:22):
Early 19th 

Speaker 2 (00:45:23):
Century. They've been altered a little bit. So it is a little hard to tell 

Speaker 1 (00:45:28):
Because when you were saying that, I was just thinking about later 19th century stuff and just the way that even movements, the aesthetic movement that is kind of linked with gayness in Oscar Wilde, 

Speaker 2 (00:45:40):
Oscar Wilde is kind of one of the notable figures in that as an openly gay man in that time period. And the aesthetic movement, which had a wide variety of goals 

Speaker 1 (00:45:55):
Into 

Speaker 2 (00:45:55):
It, but in terms of dress was widely influenced by gay men. 

Speaker 1 (00:46:00):
Yeah, I want to say, and maybe I'm dreaming this, but I feel like did Wild wear a green carnation or something that was dyed green? 

Speaker 2 (00:46:09):
I think so. I can't quote that for sure. And that 

Speaker 1 (00:46:12):
Was sort of also a little bit of code. 

Speaker 2 (00:46:14):
Right. Well, and speaking of code, and we don't have any in the collection, but while we're standing in the men's wear section of storage, we can talk about the gay hanky code. Well, 

Speaker 1 (00:46:23):
Yeah, and that's what I was just thinking about the Carnation as a gay hanky code kind of predating almost that sort of idea because it's like if you cannot be open about your sexuality, you have to develop these sort of ways of talking about it. 

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):
And it was a way that men in the, I can't remember if it's sixties or seventies, 1960s or seventies, 

Speaker 1 (00:46:47):
I feel like people were still using it up until very recently. So I'm not sure where it started exactly, but 

Speaker 2 (00:46:54):
I've even heard a lecture on it and I can't remember. But the idea was there was a color code and you would put the handkerchief in your back pocket or around you. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:05):
Yeah. I mean, I want to say even it gets so crazy specific because even the position of it in which pocket, which sometimes I think it's even around your arms maybe or in different places, all signify different interests. 

Speaker 2 (00:47:20):
And so it could be a symbol as being gay or bi. It could be what are your sexual preferences? 

Speaker 1 (00:47:30):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:47:30):
That often was the case because you couldn't go up to someone, you really shouldn't still go up to someone just ask them about their sexual preferences. But that was a way that they could codify without having other people know. And you could get basically the code on a little card 

Speaker 1 (00:47:51):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:47:51):
You could reference that card and know what handkerchief you wanted to use, or you could look for someone with the color that expressed your same interest. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:03):
Yeah, it's one of those things that I feel like the internet has made obsolete. The internet has made the hanky code pretty unnecessary at this point. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:12):
Dating apps as well. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And people just say it right there and it's like, you don't have to use any code. It's just spelled out. So 

Speaker 2 (00:48:21):
We do have a couple of fun little pieces here for men. When you look at the men's section, it is a lot of black and gray, and that is unfortunately just 

Speaker 1 (00:48:30):
The way 

Speaker 2 (00:48:30):
It goes for men's fashion, kind of what we were talking about earlier. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:33):
But I mean, it's so great actually just to see it right here, the rigidity of it and just especially that level of expression and the sort of how limited it really is. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:43):
But we do have some things. So we have this lovely 1920 smoking jacket, lounge 

Speaker 1 (00:48:48):
Jacket. Oh wow. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:49):
That is 

Speaker 1 (00:48:50):
Something, 

Speaker 2 (00:48:51):
Some purple velvet going on with floral embroidery on it. And this is something that a man would wear when he's after dinner with his group, with his male buddies smoking. And there's a part of me that wonders if there was that kind of, I mean they generally were worn by straight men, 

Speaker 1 (00:49:16):
But 

Speaker 2 (00:49:16):
It perhaps because in the confines of your home parlor that they could wear those flamboyant things that they couldn't wear otherwise. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:28):
Yeah. Do you need me to help? Okay. I was like, I can help you. I can hold your mic for a second. It's 

Speaker 2 (00:49:34):
All good. Well, yeah, and 

Speaker 1 (00:49:36):
This is something else I feel like we've run into a little bit in the museum, and I'm sure you run into it maybe a little bit more because I'm sure working in curatorial the idea of facts and what we know, right? Absolutely. That's something you're kind of butting up against a lot. And so it's like there you're saying, well, I kind of wonder about this. And it becomes this really hard thing I think when you're talking about gay history, because when you're talking about something that people had to hide, you sometimes don't have those facts because people were either hiding it themselves sometimes or having it hidden for them. There's plenty of instances where there are artists that expressed their gay desires in letters that were hidden the public for years and stuff. And it's like, so we have these things being purposefully hidden. We have them by artists, their 

Speaker 2 (00:50:37):
Families, 

Speaker 1 (00:50:38):
Historians as well. I mean, there are plenty of times too, it's even that way of to me saying, well, I don't think this matters is a way of hiding it. And it might 

Speaker 2 (00:50:50):
Not be conscious, 

Speaker 1 (00:50:51):
You might not be doing it consciously, but 

Speaker 2 (00:50:54):
Every 

Speaker 1 (00:50:55):
Time somebody talks about Picasso, I feel like they mention what a womanizer he was. And Picasso's sexuality is almost always brought up regularly, whether it's being connected to the paintings or not. So we always feel it's important to talk about that. I don't know of a 

Speaker 2 (00:51:12):
Time 

Speaker 1 (00:51:12):
Somebody has talked to me about Frida Kahlo and not mentioned that she was married to Diego Rivera, 

Speaker 2 (00:51:18):
Even though her fashion was oftentimes very queer 

Speaker 1 (00:51:21):
And she was queer. We have a person who is very openly bisexual who is dating women. The fact that we choose not to talk about 

Speaker 2 (00:51:34):
That 

Speaker 1 (00:51:34):
I think is not an accident. Maybe it's the intent isn't really clearly thought out, but it's this unspoken idea that it's somehow indecent to mention it, that it's sort of not polite to mention it, which basically just to me confirms this idea that our very identities are indecent. 

Speaker 2 (00:51:58):
Right. 

Speaker 1 (00:51:59):
That's how I feel 

Speaker 2 (00:52:00):
Well spoken in the month of pride. 

Speaker 1 (00:52:04):
So anyway, I keep interrupting our little tour of fashion for bigger ideas. Sorry. 

Speaker 2 (00:52:11):
Well, but that's part of what it is. And the last couple things I think that we can look at here is we do have a couple of very flamboyant, I think is the polite way of putting it, outrageous fashions with a lovely man's shirt that is a 

Speaker 1 (00:52:31):
Bright, 

Speaker 2 (00:52:31):
Bright yellow and is semi shear and in all likelihood, 

Speaker 1 (00:52:37):
Hood 

Speaker 2 (00:52:37):
What is not worn with a shirt underneath it. So you have your skin revealed, and then a pair of pants that have an outrageous, 

Speaker 1 (00:52:47):
Vibrant. These pants are something else. What year are these 

Speaker 2 (00:52:50):
From? So this ensemble is from 1971. 

Speaker 1 (00:52:53):
Okay. 

Speaker 2 (00:52:54):
And so that right on, that kind of the peacock revolution as it was had already ended, but there was still some holdover in that. And so these pans have a lot of bright colors, a lot of patterns intermingling. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:10):
The illustration style reminds me, I mean, your guess of sixties feels very spot on to me right off the bat because that style looks almost like, do you know those early Warhol drawings, the ink blot drawings before the silk screen stuff when he was actually doing commercial design and he's drawing all those shoes and stuff. They look a lot like those early Warhol drawings. That line drawing that I do kind of associate with the sixties a little bit more. 

Speaker 2 (00:53:39):
Well, and it's got various things that would be interesting to interpret, such as the tiger with playing cards 

Speaker 1 (00:53:47):
Or 

Speaker 2 (00:53:47):
The rooster in the Pink rooster 

Speaker 1 (00:53:52):
That's repeated 

Speaker 2 (00:53:53):
In a lot of floral prints. So definitely some interesting pieces. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:59):
And as I'm saying this too, I keep going, I keep saying the thing about the sixties, that's another thing I always think about is how arbitrary we make those divisions of time. The idea of, you said 71, right? 

Speaker 2 (00:54:11):
71 is when we have it dated 

Speaker 1 (00:54:13):
For some reason when we look backwards, we always put this clear line, well, this is where this started and this stopped. And it's like, but that's not how we ever think about how we dress when 2010 rolled over. We didn't suddenly start changing how we dress radically 

Speaker 2 (00:54:29):
Though. A friend of mine pointed this out, and she's not a fashion historian, but she was totally right, is fashion now seems to actually, you're right that it's still not one year you stop a style and then start a completely new style. But when we talk about fashion history, we often break it down by decades, but now it's more of fashion from 65 to 75, 75 to 85. And when I started to think about that, I realized it was World War ii. The war ended in 1945, and so then that pushed all of those divisions of fashion. So this piece from 1971 kind of fits within that realm of this 

Speaker 1 (00:55:13):
65 to 75. 

Speaker 2 (00:55:14):
Yeah, 65 to 75. 

Speaker 1 (00:55:15):
Yeah. I mean that makes sense too. I mean, a lot of the things that does make sense with a lot of the stylistic things always felt like, especially the early seventies and late sixties have a lot more visually in common, certainly than the early sixties and the, I mean, early sixties and late sixties I feel like look very different and a lot of media and even if you think music and a lot of other places, and the same with the early eighties have a lot more in common with the late seventies. That's an interesting point. I never thought about that mid division that's really probably more accurate. 

Speaker 2 (00:55:50):
Well, and I was born in the mid eighties, so I was a child in the late eighties and coming into my own in the nineties, but I can easily remember wearing eighties style 

Speaker 1 (00:56:02):
Clothing. 

Speaker 2 (00:56:03):
I definitely had the skinny jeans and the giant sweatshirt. And so 

Speaker 1 (00:56:08):
It 

Speaker 2 (00:56:08):
Is definitely an interesting divide. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:10):
Yeah. Yeah. It's just one of those things where when you look backwards, you tend to be put things in a little more rigid camp where when you're in the moment it's like all those things are still kind of commingling. And it's like everyone's houses. When you go to somebody's house, a friend's house, it's always interesting to tell what year their house was built and the design when the majority of the furniture was bought, my parents, their house was built in the seventies. So everything is like avocado gold and 

Speaker 2 (00:56:40):
Harvest gold. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:41):
Harvest gold, exactly. And it screams that very particular time period in the seventies. 

Speaker 2 (00:56:51):
So the last thing in the men's wear that I want us to look at is a collection of pieces, men's wear pieces by John Bartlett and John Bartlett is both a gay man and a Cincinnati native. And some years ago, I think in the early two thousands, did an exhibition with us and donated quite a bit of both men's wear and women's wear. And so we have this great collection and one of the pieces that collections that we have represented was essentially kind of inspired by prison. And there was honestly this kind of bondage esque, not in the sense of the Tom v leather, but this binding, this controlling. So it's an interesting, he does play a lot on different interpretations, different aesthetics that kind of bridge the gap between gay and straight. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (00:57:50):
I remember that exhibition too. It was really interesting because it was, and I think this was heavily influenced by him if I remember correctly, but all of the male mannequins were lined up in the back of the exhibition and stacked on three tiers. So they were all in rows, very rigid and orderly. And then the female mannequins were all kind of out and more fluidly placed through the gallery that you could kind walk around. So he was sort of commenting on those differences of the gender fashions and expectations in the sort of layout of the show too. 

Speaker 2 (00:58:28):
Right. And he is someone that has done that within his designs as well. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:35):
I mean, was there anything else you wanted to talk about or anything else we didn't talk 

Speaker 2 (00:58:38):
About? Well, in terms of one of the people that I haven't mentioned that actually is a more recent is Johnny Versace. Oh yeah, yeah. We should definitely 

Speaker 1 (00:58:48):
Talk about Versace. 

Speaker 2 (00:58:49):
So for anyone that doesn't remember this, Johnny Versace was a very openly gay man and was murdered in 90, oh gosh, mid nineties. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:00):
Mid to 

Speaker 2 (00:59:01):
Late nineties. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:01):
Yeah, I do not remember exactly. I 

Speaker 2 (00:59:03):
Remember it 

Speaker 1 (00:59:04):
Happening 

Speaker 2 (00:59:05):
As a kid. So we do have one Johnny Versace piece, which is mostly in a box, but he was known for very pretty garish prints and both for women's wear and men's wear. So we have a dress that's kind of got a tutu skirt on it that has a lot of golden glitz on it, spaghetti straps with 

Speaker 1 (00:59:29):
Rhinestones 

Speaker 2 (00:59:30):
On it. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:32):
This is something I just was keep thinking about the idea of taste, and maybe this is coming back to the idea of camp, but the idea of, I kind of wonder if that's a little bit of part of the sort of gay designer is sort of wanting to push, I get to say what's good taste, right? And the idea of taste and the idea of preference are not that far from each other. Right? Absolutely. The idea of being told that the thing you like is wrong or bad or unnatural or all of these things, and it's just like, well, it's just my taste. And then the idea of taste and the way it sort of happens in art can also be oppressive as well. The idea that, well, this is good, this is good taste, obviously. And usually that's code for basically you have enough money, wealth, class, race, whatever, to basically put you in the know of what is good taste and what is bad taste. And so I think sometimes these designers are willingly sort of pushing that idea of what is good taste and challenging it by making these patterns so big and so over the top and being like, well, I have the power now I get to say what's good taste. 

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And they didn't always wield it well, in my opinion, 

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
But that's what I love about it. I mean, I kind of love the idea of just looking at something and being like, oh, that's so tasteless. I 

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Love it. 

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
And you mentioned John Waters movies earlier. 

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Oh, 

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
The whole point is right, it's like of taking bad taste and sort of saying, no, this is what I'm going to, I'm going to celebrate bad taste. Because it's also the underlying message is I don't want to be you be the straight world, basically. This is 

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
The unders skirt for the Versace. Oh, okay. 

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Wow. Yeah. Alright, well thank you Adam, so much for bringing me down here to show me all this cool stuff. 

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
It's always a pleasure. 

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Thanks. Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. The special exhibition on view right now is Terracotta Army Legacy of the first emperor of China. Plus special features include Jane Bussy innovations and weaving and kenchi painting, beauty and death. Join us on July 1st from three to 4:00 PM for a gallery experience on looking closer, whether you're a museum newbie or an art nerd. This tour will help you find new ways to make the most of your museum trip. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Efron Al by Belau. And hey, do you know someone who would appreciate this episode? Why not share it with them? I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.