When Björk showed up to the 2001 Academy Awards wearing a dress that looked as if a swan were draped around her neck, the singer became the first word in red-carpet ridicule.
Now, the most infamous ensemble in Oscar history is demanding a second look as a highlight of a new Museum of Modern Art retrospective honoring the Icelandic musician’s body of work.
“It’s great that we can celebrate it and talk about it still, after 15 years,” says Marjan Pejoski, the Macedonian designer behind the feathered creation. (He’s now designing for the buzzy London line KTZ.) “That [the dress] made it into MoMA … it’s just a spectacular and amazing thing that it came back full circle.”
In honor of the exhibition, which opened this month, here’s a look at the dress that launched a thousand parodies — and why it’s Pejoski who’s getting the last laugh.
A swan is born
Björk may have flown the dress into the spotlight, but it originally debuted on designer Pejoski’s fall/winter 2001 runway. “The whole narrative that season was inspired by the motion of a merry-go-round, with all these different animals. The swan was a part of that,” the designer says. “Björk loved it.”
Build-a-bird
“The whole dress was like a sculpture, done three-dimensionally in a mixture of so many different fabrics, from suede leather to woolen felt, goose feathers, swan feathers — lots of down,” Pejoski says.
Laying a real egg
Often forgotten is the fact that Björk brought six ostrich eggs with her to the Oscars and scattered them on the red carpet. But, as she told GQ, “other people’s bodyguards kept picking them up and saying in their thick American accents, ‘’Scuse me, ma’am, you dropped this.’”
Two of a kind
Because the delicate design could not be dry-cleaned, an exact copy of the dress was made.
Besides wearing it to the Oscars — she was nominated that year for Best Original Song for “I’ve Seen It All” from the film “Dancer in the Dark” (in which she starred) — Björk also donned the frock for the cover of her 2001 album “Vespertine.”
The swan lives on
Valentino designers Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri had birds on the brain when they showed a strikingly similar — albeit subtler — interpretation of the swan dress at their spring 2014 Paris couture show.
The most scathing reviews of the swan dress
The dress ruffled feathers, but now it’s art, so critics can stuff it.
“She dances in the dark, and dresses there too. Let’s dub her ‘Alice in Blunderland.’” — Mr. Blackwell, creator of the Worst Dressed List
“Björk’s wraparound swan frock … made her look like a refugee from the more dog-eared precincts of provincial ballet.” — Jay Carr, the Boston Globe
“Probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.” — Steven Cojocaru, TV fashion critic
“This girl should be put into an asylum.” — Joan Rivers