GOLF issue
aRUDE comment
ONLINE content
ARBITERS
Got Game Marisa Baena interview by Iké Udé
Large Arc Robert Baker interview by Iké Udé
MirrorMask Neil Gaiman interview by Brandon Judell
Cineman Chief at MOMA Jytte Jensen interview by Brandon Judell
Scents and Sensibility Chandler Burr interview by Lacy Crawford
The Supreme Tiger Tiger Woods profile by John Huggan
Building Bridges Bob Rubin interview by Nicholas Callaway
BEAUTY
Beauty Illustrated photography by Jamie Nelson
A Girl's Best Friend photography by Kimio Takeyama
BON APPETIT
Questions for Chanterelle's David Waltuck
Questions for Gualtiero Marchesi
Casati in Chocolate by Scot D. Ryersson & Michael Orlando Yaccarino
FASHION
Self Portrait Diane von Furstenberg Essay & interview by Iké Udé
Costume Change Harold Koda interview by Ralph Rucci
Hannah And Her Syster photography by Nicholas Callaway
KULTURE & ART CINEMA
The Boy From Oz Michel Wright interview by Brandon Judell
Eternal Tees Maggie Gyllenhall interview by Brandon Judell
Smart and Smarter Jeff Daniels interview by Brandon Judell
Happy Endings Lisa Kudrow interview by Brandon Judell
The Toronto Kid Norman Jewison interview by Brandon Judell
Family Values Natasha Richarson interview by Brandon Judell
LEGEND
Immortal Bobby Bobby Jones interview by Robert Green
The Quixotic Limelight Payne Stewart interview by Robert Green
Master and Peacock Walter Hagen interview by Robert Green
Eternal Optimist Gary Player interview by Cyril le Tonqueze
OFF THE WALL GREEN IS OUR COLOR
Pier Guerci
Robert F. Smith
REVIEW
aRUDE Comment by Iké Udé
Telescope A close-up of the stars, notables, scenesters and picturesque dilettantes
ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
The Impresario's New Act Ian Schrager interview by Alex Ulam
Golf Landscapes
STYLE
Pardon Our Apparance Kangaroo, Lake karrinyup...
Element of Style aRUDE's template for style
Style File Robert Rufino
15 Minutes Plus Ragin Success Idris Mignott interview by Lola Ogunnaike
Fantasy & Simulacrum Giraffe, The Leopard Creek...
Le Girl
aRUDE comment
golf_issue_hkoda.php
ONLINE content
ARBITERS
Got Game Marisa Baena interview by Iké Udé
Large Arc Robert Baker interview by Iké Udé
MirrorMask Neil Gaiman interview by Brandon Judell
Cineman Chief at MOMA Jytte Jensen interview by Brandon Judell
Scents and Sensibility Chandler Burr interview by Lacy Crawford
The Supreme Tiger Tiger Woods profile by John Huggan
Building Bridges Bob Rubin interview by Nicholas Callaway
BEAUTY
Beauty Illustrated photography by Jamie Nelson
A Girl's Best Friend photography by Kimio Takeyama
BON APPETIT
Questions for Chanterelle's David Waltuck
Questions for Gualtiero Marchesi
Casati in Chocolate by Scot D. Ryersson & Michael Orlando Yaccarino
FASHION
Self Portrait Diane von Furstenberg Essay & interview by Iké Udé
Costume Change Harold Koda interview by Ralph Rucci
Hannah And Her Syster photography by Nicholas Callaway
KULTURE & ART CINEMA
The Boy From Oz Michel Wright interview by Brandon Judell
Eternal Tees Maggie Gyllenhall interview by Brandon Judell
Smart and Smarter Jeff Daniels interview by Brandon Judell
Happy Endings Lisa Kudrow interview by Brandon Judell
The Toronto Kid Norman Jewison interview by Brandon Judell
Family Values Natasha Richarson interview by Brandon Judell
LEGEND
Immortal Bobby Bobby Jones interview by Robert Green
The Quixotic Limelight Payne Stewart interview by Robert Green
Master and Peacock Walter Hagen interview by Robert Green
Eternal Optimist Gary Player interview by Cyril le Tonqueze
OFF THE WALL GREEN IS OUR COLOR
Pier Guerci
Robert F. Smith
REVIEW
aRUDE Comment by Iké Udé
Telescope A close-up of the stars, notables, scenesters and picturesque dilettantes
ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
The Impresario's New Act Ian Schrager interview by Alex Ulam
Golf Landscapes
STYLE
Pardon Our Apparance Kangaroo, Lake karrinyup...
Element of Style aRUDE's template for style
Style File Robert Rufino
15 Minutes Plus Ragin Success Idris Mignott interview by Lola Ogunnaike
Fantasy & Simulacrum Giraffe, The Leopard Creek...
Le Girl
HAROLD KODA costume change
interview Ralph Rucci
Harold Koda photography Iké Udé click image to enlarge Ralph Rucci: You are in the process of taking down your last exhibit, Chanel, about which there was some controversy. How do you feel about that?
Harold Koda: After I worked on the Armani show, I learned several things that sensitized my approach a bit, but it's really taken me two shows for the problems to make themselves apparent. So much of the criticism of the Armani exhibition addressed the issue of corporate sponsorship, to the point that the importance of Giorgio as one of the most influential designers of the late 20th century was simply passed over. It is evident that no matter how much real curatorial independence is exercised, certain members of the art press will perceive an institutional compromise of integrity. Other things worked against the Armani exhibition as well. Armani's design innovations are so completely integrated into contemporary life, and because even his early works still look like they might be in the windows of Bergdorf's, many people saw it simply as a commercial display. Armani's genius is in designing wearable clothing. His aesthetic precipitated a paradigm shift in the most traditional mÈtier, men's tailoring, and established the uniform of the "new career woman." Similar problems have attended the perception of the Chanel exhibition. My colleague Andrew Bolton and I wanted to contribute something new to the understanding of Chanel's oeuvre. As we reviewed our own collection, which is very rich in Chanels from the '20s and '30s, we saw very quickly that Chanel's designs were not about structure, like a Charles James, or the investigation of bias, like a Vionnet, or complicated seaming, like a Schiaparelli. Her interest and her impact were an inversion of social norms and a creation of a new aesthetic strategy of dressing. But again, despite its original social impact, so many of the ideas that she incorporated into her work have become the standard of contemporary dress, and even of mass manufacturing.
RR: You said you made some mistakes with it. But clearly, it's been a great success, a commercial success?
HK: Well, over 460,000 people have seen it, which is extraordinary.
RR: Would you agree that this avalanche of attention began with Mrs. Vreeland's direction?
HK: Oh absolutely.
RR: How did your experience of working with her effect your own point of view in working as the costume curator at the Metropolitan Museum?
HK: The first show that I worked on at The Met was The Glory of Russian Costume. My first meeting with Mrs. Vreeland was inauspicious. For her first day back from her summer holiday, we had dressed some seraphim dresses. These were the best clothes of the wealthiest peasants, who, in the feudal structure of pre-revolutionary Russia, were incredibly rich because they controlled estates that were, you know, 5,000 to 20,000 miles square! Everyone was prepared for Mrs. Vreeland; all the dressers were arrayed around the seraphins as we heard her approach with the four or five post-debs that followed her around. She was like a hip-hop star, you know, with a crew. You could literally hear her coming, her shoes on the travertine floor in the empty galleries. Suddenly, she appeared at the ramp to the gallery, rushing toward us and screaming, "What is this!? What is this!? These girls have no hauteur! They have no panache! We have to give them some Èclat! What is this!?" Everybody was really quiet. I'm astonished, because this is my heroine, right? I had all of these ideas about her from seeing my mother's Vogues in the '60s, from, you know, going through those dream books. I was aghast. I said to the back of her head, "Excuse me, Mrs. Vreeland. But the Russian curators have told us that the hemlines of these dresses are to fall five to eight inches from the floor." She turned around and said without blinking her eyes, "Are you Japanese? Don't you realize the Russians hate the Japanese? Always have and always will?" and walked away. I thought, What was that? Ultimately, I understood. What she wanted to establish was my loyalty \ to her vision, or to their vision. Her vision had to do with the excitement of fashion. Their vision had to do with the faithful replication of history. But the latter doesn't necessarily have to do with capturing the truth.
RR: Mrs. Vreeland knew how much I admired Pauline de Rothschild…I asked her, "what was Pauline really like?" and she said, "You do realize she walked on the balls of her feet. She floated." In twenty years I never understood what that meant, but I was at a lunch about three years ago with Ward Bennett, who had worked with Pauline at Hattie Carnegie, and I asked him. He said, "It was the most curious thing. She held her hands in the most strange way, out in front of her with her wrists open, and she would walk in the most peculiar way. She sort of walked on the ball of her foot with her hands out so she looked like a ghost floating." So it has to do, I think, people, with such sensitively honed vision, such taste…
HK: And they reduce their impressions to these compelling details.
HK: I'm actually not an academic—by training or predisposition—but compared to people who are actually in the fashion world, I'm at the academic end of the spectrum. On the academic end of the spectrum, I am more toward fashion.
RR: Talk about the influence, inspiration and collaboration with Richard Martin.
HK: We worked together for seventeen years. The extraordinary thing about Richard was how much he lived in a world of ideas. I've heard that when you're schizophrenic, your mind begins to make a lot of connections between things, that you see commonalities a lot. If that's true, Richard had a schizophrenic's pathology to establish connections between things that had no obvious relationship. Frequently, at his lectures I'd think, "This is bullshit." But it was still brilliant.Can you believe that? His thoughts yielded the pleasure of their internal logic, in the profundity of their connections. Very high-concept French!
RR: You had the courage to admit that you were caught in a mid-life crisis. You went back to Harvard and got your graduate degree in landscape architecture. Did that give you the courage and perspective to take the steps to direct The Costume Institute?
HK: I've actually been somewhat passive all my life, even the way I fell into becoming a costume curator. Anyway, with my decision to study landscape architecture, my friends would say, "You're so brave," but it's not brave if you're moving towards something. Away from something that bores you and towards something that seems like it might excite you. It's easy. And the hurdles—the cost, the time commitment—are irrelevant.
RR: Do you ever miss the sort of cosmopolitan fashion moments you had in New York?
HK: You know what happened? In Cambridge, after a period of years when I had only a passing interest in contemporary fashion, I found myself desperate for my Vogue, my W, my Harper's, Elle and Mirabella. It was my re-connection to something that I had always loved but had become inured to. Cambridge's idea of hot fashion is Abercrombie and Fitch. (Chuckles) I mean, Harvard undergrads are so earnest.
RR: Life can be aggravating, but I feel very lucky to be able to pursue what I do. Do you recognize the important seat you occupy?
HK: If you study fashion history, you realize taste is so ephemeral: something that is ugly in one period or one culture can be an attribute of beauty in another. To say, "Oh, we have a vision that we can project onto the great unwashed," would be presumptuous. We leave the education to suavity, elegance and beauty to the designers. Then we can cull from that and tell our own stories. Ultimately, it's really kind of self-indulgent, what we're doing…we just happen to have a venue that allows us to play.
interview Ralph Rucci
Harold Koda photography Iké Udé click image to enlarge Ralph Rucci: You are in the process of taking down your last exhibit, Chanel, about which there was some controversy. How do you feel about that?
Harold Koda: After I worked on the Armani show, I learned several things that sensitized my approach a bit, but it's really taken me two shows for the problems to make themselves apparent. So much of the criticism of the Armani exhibition addressed the issue of corporate sponsorship, to the point that the importance of Giorgio as one of the most influential designers of the late 20th century was simply passed over. It is evident that no matter how much real curatorial independence is exercised, certain members of the art press will perceive an institutional compromise of integrity. Other things worked against the Armani exhibition as well. Armani's design innovations are so completely integrated into contemporary life, and because even his early works still look like they might be in the windows of Bergdorf's, many people saw it simply as a commercial display. Armani's genius is in designing wearable clothing. His aesthetic precipitated a paradigm shift in the most traditional mÈtier, men's tailoring, and established the uniform of the "new career woman." Similar problems have attended the perception of the Chanel exhibition. My colleague Andrew Bolton and I wanted to contribute something new to the understanding of Chanel's oeuvre. As we reviewed our own collection, which is very rich in Chanels from the '20s and '30s, we saw very quickly that Chanel's designs were not about structure, like a Charles James, or the investigation of bias, like a Vionnet, or complicated seaming, like a Schiaparelli. Her interest and her impact were an inversion of social norms and a creation of a new aesthetic strategy of dressing. But again, despite its original social impact, so many of the ideas that she incorporated into her work have become the standard of contemporary dress, and even of mass manufacturing.
RR: You said you made some mistakes with it. But clearly, it's been a great success, a commercial success?
HK: Well, over 460,000 people have seen it, which is extraordinary.
RR: Would you agree that this avalanche of attention began with Mrs. Vreeland's direction?
HK: Oh absolutely.
RR: How did your experience of working with her effect your own point of view in working as the costume curator at the Metropolitan Museum?
HK: The first show that I worked on at The Met was The Glory of Russian Costume. My first meeting with Mrs. Vreeland was inauspicious. For her first day back from her summer holiday, we had dressed some seraphim dresses. These were the best clothes of the wealthiest peasants, who, in the feudal structure of pre-revolutionary Russia, were incredibly rich because they controlled estates that were, you know, 5,000 to 20,000 miles square! Everyone was prepared for Mrs. Vreeland; all the dressers were arrayed around the seraphins as we heard her approach with the four or five post-debs that followed her around. She was like a hip-hop star, you know, with a crew. You could literally hear her coming, her shoes on the travertine floor in the empty galleries. Suddenly, she appeared at the ramp to the gallery, rushing toward us and screaming, "What is this!? What is this!? These girls have no hauteur! They have no panache! We have to give them some Èclat! What is this!?" Everybody was really quiet. I'm astonished, because this is my heroine, right? I had all of these ideas about her from seeing my mother's Vogues in the '60s, from, you know, going through those dream books. I was aghast. I said to the back of her head, "Excuse me, Mrs. Vreeland. But the Russian curators have told us that the hemlines of these dresses are to fall five to eight inches from the floor." She turned around and said without blinking her eyes, "Are you Japanese? Don't you realize the Russians hate the Japanese? Always have and always will?" and walked away. I thought, What was that? Ultimately, I understood. What she wanted to establish was my loyalty \ to her vision, or to their vision. Her vision had to do with the excitement of fashion. Their vision had to do with the faithful replication of history. But the latter doesn't necessarily have to do with capturing the truth.
RR: Mrs. Vreeland knew how much I admired Pauline de Rothschild…I asked her, "what was Pauline really like?" and she said, "You do realize she walked on the balls of her feet. She floated." In twenty years I never understood what that meant, but I was at a lunch about three years ago with Ward Bennett, who had worked with Pauline at Hattie Carnegie, and I asked him. He said, "It was the most curious thing. She held her hands in the most strange way, out in front of her with her wrists open, and she would walk in the most peculiar way. She sort of walked on the ball of her foot with her hands out so she looked like a ghost floating." So it has to do, I think, people, with such sensitively honed vision, such taste…
HK: And they reduce their impressions to these compelling details.
Ultimately, it's really kind of self-indulgent, what we're doing…
we just happen to have a venue that allows us to play.
RR: An oracle…..About your approach
as a curator, you refer to yourself as an academic, but you're
more than that…
HK: I'm actually not an academic—by training or predisposition—but compared to people who are actually in the fashion world, I'm at the academic end of the spectrum. On the academic end of the spectrum, I am more toward fashion.
RR: Talk about the influence, inspiration and collaboration with Richard Martin.
HK: We worked together for seventeen years. The extraordinary thing about Richard was how much he lived in a world of ideas. I've heard that when you're schizophrenic, your mind begins to make a lot of connections between things, that you see commonalities a lot. If that's true, Richard had a schizophrenic's pathology to establish connections between things that had no obvious relationship. Frequently, at his lectures I'd think, "This is bullshit." But it was still brilliant.Can you believe that? His thoughts yielded the pleasure of their internal logic, in the profundity of their connections. Very high-concept French!
RR: You had the courage to admit that you were caught in a mid-life crisis. You went back to Harvard and got your graduate degree in landscape architecture. Did that give you the courage and perspective to take the steps to direct The Costume Institute?
HK: I've actually been somewhat passive all my life, even the way I fell into becoming a costume curator. Anyway, with my decision to study landscape architecture, my friends would say, "You're so brave," but it's not brave if you're moving towards something. Away from something that bores you and towards something that seems like it might excite you. It's easy. And the hurdles—the cost, the time commitment—are irrelevant.
RR: Do you ever miss the sort of cosmopolitan fashion moments you had in New York?
HK: You know what happened? In Cambridge, after a period of years when I had only a passing interest in contemporary fashion, I found myself desperate for my Vogue, my W, my Harper's, Elle and Mirabella. It was my re-connection to something that I had always loved but had become inured to. Cambridge's idea of hot fashion is Abercrombie and Fitch. (Chuckles) I mean, Harvard undergrads are so earnest.
RR: Life can be aggravating, but I feel very lucky to be able to pursue what I do. Do you recognize the important seat you occupy?
HK: If you study fashion history, you realize taste is so ephemeral: something that is ugly in one period or one culture can be an attribute of beauty in another. To say, "Oh, we have a vision that we can project onto the great unwashed," would be presumptuous. We leave the education to suavity, elegance and beauty to the designers. Then we can cull from that and tell our own stories. Ultimately, it's really kind of self-indulgent, what we're doing…we just happen to have a venue that allows us to play.
