Fashion & Beauty

Meet Charles James, this year’s Met Gala muse

If you’re unfamiliar with designer Charles James, the focus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest fashion exhibition, you’re not alone. With enthusiasm for last year’s show, “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” still echoing in the style world, the announcement of “Charles James: Beyond Fashion,” opening Thursday, was met with shrugs and choruses of “Who?”

“Fashion has always been about looking to the future, so if you don’t have a living brand or a trademark that is still around, everyone forgets,” explains Harold Koda, curator-in-charge of the Met’s Costume Institute, pointing out why most people today can’t place the name. “But Charles James was so consequential while he was alive and producing that [Cristóbal] Balenciaga actually gave him one of his greatest accolades, saying, ‘He’s not simply the greatest American couturier, he’s the greatest in the world.’”

With a career that spanned from the ’20s until his death in 1978, James was one of the pre-eminent designers in America — and a compelling character at that.

Born in England in 1906 to a British military officer and his Chicago heiress wife, James had a privileged youth. He befriended his lifelong pal, the photographer Cecil Beaton, in prep school, and worked in London and Paris before spending his most prolific years in New York designing custom dresses for America’s fashionable elite.

In the ’40s and ’50s, the flamboyant expat gained the patronage of society style icons such as Austine Hearst and Millicent Rogers, and even wooed burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, though James’ mercurial personality repelled as many people as it attracted. Beaton once wrote of James: “His talent was marvelous; his wit, bitter . . . He could be utterly wonderful and, then, with alacrity, kill everything by being objectionable . . . No one could cope with his temperament for long.”

Though he had no formal training, James was unanimously well-regarded for his craft, and was considered a master of sculpture. His innovative structural designs (think gowns with back zippers) garnered praise from legends Balenciaga and Christian Dior, who cited James as the inspiration for his groundbreaking “New Look.”

“In the fashion industry, he was breaking all the rules,” says Koda, who seeks to illustrate the artistry of James’ craft and his role as a true couturier in the new exhibition.

But financial woes followed “because he put all the money back into the business, and there just wasn’t enough,” James’ last assistant, Homer Layne, told style.com. “Dior and people like that had backers who gave them much more money than [Charles James’] clients.”

Bankrupt by the ’60s, he moved into the Chelsea Hotel, where Koda says he maintained a sort of salon for the city’s illustrious creatives — among them jewelry designer Elsa Peretti, Andy Warhol and the documentarian of it all, Bill Cunningham.

“He really approached his work as an artist,” says Koda. “Other designers created dozens and dozens of dresses for each collection — that’s the fashion business. James was a different kind of designer; he worked outside standard fashion practices. In fact, he was sort of an irritation to the fashion industry. He was always arguing against the commercial system.”

Because James refused to be commercial, his garments are rare. The Met exhibit gathers some 75 of his most notable designs, some of which viewers will be surprised to learn he pioneered — including the sports bra, the puffer coat and the wrap dress.

And there will be ball gowns galore.

“I hate to situate [James] as a designer who only made ball gowns, but I have to say, they’re some of my favorites. They’re just so glorious,” says Koda.

“A ball gown has very little contemporary resonance, except in our fantasy life,” he continues, naming Zac Posen, Ralph Rucci and John Galliano as James’ spiritual successors. “These contemporary designers have channeled the techniques and approaches in a more conceptual way into their own clothing. So his legacy has a life, just in a different form.”