Frocks to make Bob Mackie Barbie jealous

The Supremes at the V&A.

I was that kid down the local supermarket pushing her Mum’s trolley wearing a rhinestone tiara and feather boa, I don’t need much of an excuse to get dolled up.  If there’s a job where I have an excuse to spend most of my time looking like a gowned princess, I’m in.  So when I heard London’s V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum) was planning an exhibition showing off the gloriously over the top frocks worn on stage by girl group The Supremes.  I enquired as to whether they would be needing anyone to wear these artworks in sequin , being that they’re the kind of dresses that only come into their own when shimmied and shaken.  Sadly I’m too short.  I know because I’m standing next to a dress called ‘Peach Feathers’ and its high neck tapering off the shoulders and hugging the figure all the way down to the fluff of feathers at the bottom, comes up to my nose, pressed against the glass.  I’m sure one of my Barbies had something like this?

A supreme sound, performed with supreme grace in the most glitteringly supreme costumes imaginable; it must have been an easy job naming The Supremes.  These three pretty Detroit girls sparkled, flounced, slinked and shimmied their way up the 60’s music charts, singing the Motown Records sound into living rooms and making white boys want to get down and dance like black men.  In the process becoming the most successful girl group ever.

This exhibition marks out in tacking pins this journey from sweaters and pleated skirts to dress suits and chiffon, through velvet, silk and mink to sequins, rhinestones, plastics, lycra and dazzling synthetics in matched ensembles with names like “Black Diamonds”, “Swirling Carousel” and “Turquoise Freeze”.  If those titles and fabrics aren’t enough to dye a picture in your mind, Liberace’s costume designer, Michael Travis, first designed for these girls as did Bob Mackie, ‘The Rajah or Rhinestones’ and ‘The Sultan of Sequins’.

The exhibition’s outfit benefactress, Mary Wilson, the longest serving Supreme, sums up their attitude perfectly saying “You can’t climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure”.  Growing up in America’s first federally funded Housing Project the glitz and splendour of Hollywood must have seemed an impossibly long way off but at 16 the girls started performing in costumes Mary and Diane (Diana Ross) had designed themselves in that glamorous, wealthy image.  And the allure they borrowed worked for them too.  Picked up by Motown Records it wasn’t just the new ‘Sound of Young America’ (painted on the label’s front window) they were groomed in to perfection, they also got lessons in class.  Dream fairy godmother, Maxine Powell, the exhibition has interview footage of her and she is beyond fabulous, taught the girls how to walk, eat, dance, chatter charmingly and get out of cars with refinement (something the recording studios might want to re-instate?); until they were polished and sparking enough to perform in the ’68 Royal Variety Concert wearing more rhinestones than the Queen Mum.  The exhibition has a photo of them meeting her after the show wearing gowns patterned neck to wrist to ankle in rhinestones and pearls against delicate peach, and turning around there stand the complete set of spectacularly intricate, blinding dresses, in a glass case, revolving on a great lazy Susan.  The smallest one I’m sure would fit me in heels and I promise to be careful of the few gaps in the bead work that come from ‘shakin’ thangs‘.

Behind the to-die-for frocks is the story of the first black group to cross the colour divide.  When The Supremes, in dress suits, white gloves and perfectly bobbed wigs were scoring their first of twelve number one hits with “Baby Love” and “Stop, in the name of Love”, racial segregation in the US was being chipped away by Martin Luther King’s peaceful protests and the race riots.  There weren’t any black people on TV, except maybe on the news for being lynched; but these perfectly groomed, church going, nice girls were prime-time perfect and made it onto the Ed Sullivan show.  Before black was beautiful, before there were make up and hair care products designed for darker complexions, The Supremes, dressed to the nines in all the colours of the rainbow (often at once) bridged the gap with glamour.

I’ve donned a green 60’s style shift dress with vintage sparkly broach for the occasion thinking I’ll introduce my clothes to the real deal and I‘m not the only one who‘s ‘dressed‘.  Having a bit of a shimmy to ‘Baby Love’ while watching one of the Supremes appearances on the Ed Sullivan show – coping their cutesy moves – I’m joined by a woman in jeans and her seven year old daughter in pink, sequin detail, baby doll dress and we make quite the trio (Baby Doll, the most glamorous naturally took Diana Ross’s place up front.).

This is a fun exhibition.  There’s a dark side to the story, (check out the film “Dreamgirls” for more.) but that is overlooked here for colour, music and clothes.   This is a museum trip for the “Sex and the City” generation: culture and history in the medium of gorgeous clothes.  With Harrods right down the road you don’t have to wait long to put your inspired fashionista’s eye to the test .  I’m going home to see if I can find Bob Mackie Barbie.

Exhibition runs until the 19th of October at the V&A South Kensington.