On View | Fashion's Fertile Ground for Inspiration: Gardens - New York Times (blog)

From left: Courtesy of Garden Museum; Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council From left: Collaerts Florilegium, Antwerp, 1590; a linen single pocket, with coloured wool embroidery, early- to mid-18th century.

Seasons, colors, lighting and scale are no less important in building a good garden than they are in designing a good fashion collection. The two subjects, which have more crossover than some might realize, are explored in a show at the Garden Museum in London that opens Sunday, aptly titled “Fashion & Gardens.” “Our national obsession with gardens and landscape is the greatest contribution England has brought to the world of fashion,” says the British writer and historian Nicola Shulman, a trustee of the Garden Museum in London, who leaped at the opportunity to curate the exhibition. Through art, historical photographs, artifacts and a look back at notable runways from designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino, Shulman explores the intricate relationship between the two design genres from the days of Elizabeth I up to recent runway shows.

Courtesy of Garden Museum A painting of Lettice Newdigate, aged 2, by an unknown artist.

“Gardens, like clothes, are ephemeral,” explains Shulman. She spent an entire year scouring private and public art collections across Britain in search of rare paintings and other artifacts that could throw light on the history of the interplay between the two realms. Among her finds is a portrait — on display for the first time since it was painted in 1606 — of a 2-year-old Jacobean heiress wearing a dress ornately embroidered with the pattern of a garden very similar to the one she is standing next to.

In the show, Shulman has created a timeline of the various gardening crazes that have taken the British upper classes by storm over the last four centuries. She also illustrates the positive correlation between these botanic frenzies — such as plant collecting, an expensive 17th-century hobby, or the Victorian mania for camellias — and trends in fashion prints, motifs and silhouettes. Not to be left out is the link between the quintessentially British pastime of carousing in landscaped gardens and the rise of fashionable outdoorsy clothes. Several contemporary pieces — such as a Philip Treacy orchid hat and a Valentino cape from last year’s spring couture collection that was inspired by the wrought-iron work of Italian Renaissance gardens — round out the items on display.

Catwalking, courtesy of Chris Moore A look from the Alexander McQueen Autumn-Winter 2012 collection.

The “Fashion & Gardens” exhibition also provides an occasion for the fashion set, which will be in town for the women’s Fall/Winter 2014 collections next month, to experience the Garden Museum between shows. Located in the former church of St. Mary’s near Lambeth Palace, south of the Thames, the museum is also the burial ground of John Tradescant (1570-1638), Britain’s first great gardener and plant collector. An exquisite garden on site, designed by the marchioness of Salisbury, pays homage to him. And the museum’s director, Christopher Woodward, has gone to great lengths — including swimming the Gibraltar Strait — to raise funds to turn this once-forgotten museum into a thriving center dedicated to the culture of gardens. “Gardening,” Shulman says, “just like fashion, can be an extraordinary form of art.”

“Fashion & Gardens” is on view Feb. 7 through April 27 at the Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Rd., London SE1 7LB; gardenmuseum.org.uk.

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