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'Dress Code' shows fashion can speak to us with styleSMALL TOPPER LEFT

DANIEL KANY

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Nothing provides a cultural context for a picture or a movie like clothes. At a glance, we see the 1970s, the Colonial period or the Victorian era, etc.

But what is the relationship between clothing and culture? Is fashion just a recognizable point on a timeline, or is there ever meaning in things like the hemline hypothesis? (That is, when the stock market goes up, so do skirts.)

''Dress Code'' is an exhibition on view in Maine College of Art's Free Street gallery.

Organized by MECA Illustration Department chairman Alex Rheault and juried by Brook Delorme, Bruce Brown and Daniel Pepice, the small show takes on a big set of questions with an engaged and interesting attitude.

I like the approachable scale of the show because the subject itself is so unwieldy -- and because the high fashion industry seems so abstruse and affected that the mere mention of an exhibition about fashion is enough to turn off many otherwise open-minded members of the art-viewing public.

''Dress Code'' seems tiny as you walk in the door (only 13 objects), but it took me a full -- and enjoyable -- hour to get through the show.

My favorite piece is Berry Manter's mother's favorite black dress, her engagement photo in which she is wearing the dress and an audio interview about it. Manter's mother looked amazing when she sat to be photographed in 1947. She sits on a leather cushion with her diamond ring conspicuously displayed on her right hand and wearing the dress with its black-and-pink sash/bustle.

In the audio piece, Manter's mom explains that she spent all her money on that dress when she worked in New York as a textile designer. She first wore it to a Naval Academy Christmas ball: she couldn't remember her date, but recalled seeing a pair of twins both wearing that same dress.

The issues brought to the surface by Manter's piece involve gender and identity, but in cultural rather than political terms.

Gender and identity are so commonly equated with divisive politics that we are too often intimidated to talk about them. ''Dress Code'' takes these up without being shrill or heavy-handed. To be sure, these are worthy subjects, whether you are drawn to Prada, punk or L.L. Bean.

Crystal Cawley and Jill Dalton's ''Catalog'' is a deeply complex and fascinating piece. It is a book made from Dalton's prints using old skirt hoops. The substantial tome contains images collaged from very old catalogs, patterns, thread and fabric samples, prints, embroidery and more.

The artists passed materials back and forth and reacted to the other's work. This Surrealist logic is echoed in the witty (and at times crazy) images and insights of ''Catalog.''

One riveting page has three actual thread bows of yellow, red and green, along with four illustrations of '50s-era skirts. Three of the illustrations were torn and mended with real thread of these colors.

The page brilliantly holds together the violence of the rips, mending, physicality, idealized images such as wasp waists, the act of sewing and more.

Lauren O'Neal's ''Respite'' has one empty beige London Fog-style raincoat walking another as though a dog on a leash of threads. Having no data but the comparable coats leaves us wanting more information, and reminds us that cues from clothing would help us parse such an image.

Even the piece in ''Dress Code'' I really didn't like (Lea DeForest's grating ''Masculine Undergarment'') is interesting if you are willing to stay with it: intentionally garish man's hand-knit shorts with a thong, codpiece and neck strap.

Clothing is a huge part of our culture. Whether we are trying to come across as attractive, professional, respectful, casual or dressed-up, male or female -- or even trying to blend into the crowd -- our clothing presents a set of codes absolutely legible to anyone we encounter. Normal now would have looked insane a century ago -- culture changes.

I am open to intensely political shows that take on issues of gender, class, power, oppression and so on, but this is not one of those shows. ''Dress Code'' is a conversation starter -- a smart and enjoyable little show chock full of ideas.

Freelance writer Daniel Kany is an art historian who lives in Cumberland. He can be contacted at

dankany@gmail.com