Inside the Mania for Fashion as Art

Soon after Michael Govan took over at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art three years ago, costumes and textiles curator Sharon Takeda stepped into his office with an unlikely proposal.

She suggested acquiring a rare private trove of European clothes: 550 items of women's, men's and children's pieces -- including exquisite, gold-embroidered courtiers' clothing and Queen Victoria's nightie. While the collection was cohesive and substantial, covering clothing from 1700 to 1915, Ms. Takeda wondered if the new museum director -- a specialist in contemporary art -- would put his reputation on the line for fashion.

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Los Angeles County Museum Art

"It wasn't always fashionable to have costume and textile in a museum," she explains. "For many years, we were the poor cousin even within our own museum. Many of our colleagues weren't sure what to do with it -- or whether it was really art."

The ensuing struggle to secure the collection says a great deal about the increasing value that museums are placing on fashion, which is wildly popular with the public yet costs less to collect than painting and sculpture.

Fashion and costume exhibitions have become big draws for museums, bringing new donors and visitors and generating lavish publicity for star-studded opening galas. Last year, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art drew 576,000 visitors to its "Superheroes" exhibit, says a spokeswoman. A 2005 Chanel exhibit there drew 463,000 visitors. Other notable exhibits include the Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition on Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli in 2004; San Francisco's de Young Museum's Yves St. Laurent exhibit; and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's 2006 "Skin & Bones" exhibition on fashion and architecture.

What's more, even as prices for painting and sculpture have blown sky-high in recent years, fashion and textiles remained bargain-priced. Mr. Govan muses, "How much would it cost to be No. 1 in European painting? You couldn't do it at any cost."

Mr. Govan sought change for the museum, which lacked the esteem of many of the city's own residents. Indeed, a few days earlier, he had challenged the staff to find significant, "museum-altering" pieces to acquire.

Yet valuing, acquiring and showcasing a significant fashion collection still posed major hurdles. Mr. Govan was not accustomed to working with fashion -- a word that still draws the occasional wince from him because of its frivolous and commercial connotations. "I had not a clue how to raise money for this. All my friends are in contemporary art," says Mr. Govan. "There are not people sitting around waiting to spend millions of dollars on ... costume."

Still, to Ms. Takeda's delight, he joined her in the fall of 2006 to comb through the European collection in a Basel, Switzerland, warehouse. Ellen Michelson, a longtime donor to the museum, accompanied them to watch as Wolfgang Ruf, a co-seller with Martin Kamer, pulled out items such as men's suits embroidered with gold and elaborate dresses designed to display the wealth of the wearers. One delicately embroidered silk petticoat proved that the more things change, the more they stay the same: It was made in China for export to the West.

There was an exuberant knitted men's vest from the time of the French Revolution. On the left collar was knitted a butterfly and a pair of scissors. On the right, the butterfly's wings lay snipped off, like the metaphorical wings of the country's royalists.

Mr. Govan was intrigued. The museum won't reveal the exact price but says it was several million dollars, less than a single sculpture. "A Richard Serra costs $10 million," he says. "This was less."

Yet Mr. Govan remained skeptical as the group awaited return flights at the Zurich airport. Where would the funding for the purchase come from?

At that moment, Ms. Michelson offered to commit one-third of the price -- enough to negotiate the shipment of the collection to Los Angeles on a three-year payment plan.

Still, the drama wasn't over. The value of the dollar plummeted wildly, raising the cost of Swiss francs, the currency of the deal. Credit markets yo-yoed. Fund-raising stalled. The museum was on the brink of losing the collection for lack of funds by the time the third installment payment was due last summer, when Mr. Govan was seated beside Suzanne Saperstein at a private dinner.

A well-known collector of haute couture, Ms. Saperstein had never before supported the museum. But by dessert, she was ready to see the costume collection, still under wraps in a storeroom. Soon, she was bringing friends to see the collection, including layered silk dresses that display the progress of dressmaking from hand-sewing and vegetable dyes and Paul Poiret pieces that show his elimination of the corset. Eventually, she committed more than half the price of the collection, enabling the museum to seal the deal. Ms. Takeda and her staff are cataloging the collection -- whose acquisition was announced last week -- for a 2010 debut exhibition.

The L.A. museum recently formed "Atelier" -- an elite group of patrons who will help expand the museum's textile collection. As a founding member, Ms. Saperstein has her own hopes for the mark the costume collection might make on her city. "L.A. from a fashion point of view has always been looked down on a little bit," she says. "Hopefully, it'll attract a new group of people -- and hopefully a fashion-forward group of people."

Meanwhile, Mr. Govan has a new commitment to fashion's role in the art world. "When you see this collection, not only are the things visually engaging, but you see a map: In all the elements of fashion are all the elements of how ideas are conveyed through society," he says. "Instead of being frivolous, it turns out to be a core artifact."

Write to Christina Binkley at christina.binkley@wsj.com