Exhibition: Style & Spirit - The Fashion of Chester Weinberg

 As Covid recedes into the past, it becomes possible to visit exhibitions once again.  And as luck would have it, there was a particularly interesting little fashion exhibition at the David Roche Gallery in Adelaide while I was in town.

Left: Dress (Resort 1971).  Right: Evening Dress (Spring/Summer 1968)

Called, "Style & Sprit: the Fashion of Chester Weinberg",  this exhibition followed the career of a once-prominent designer who fell into obscurity after he died of an AIDS related illness in 1985.  However, before his career was cut short he produced glamorous but wearable designs to dress the rich and fashionable of New York.

Evening dress (Fall/Winter 1970)

Weinberg graduated from the Parsons School of Design in 1951.  The first room of the exhibition contained a mixture of his early work (done for different labels including  Herbert Sondheim and Teal Traina) and some of the contemporary designers which inspired him.  (Dior, Balenciaga and Courreges are included in the second group.)

Reception dress (Spring 1969)

The second, and larger, room contains examples of Weinberg's work after he established his own label in 1966.  This is a mixture of knockout evening and cocktail dresses, and discretely stylish day wear.  One of the labels in this room told us that, though Weinberg felt compelled to design fashionable miniskirts in the late 60s, he always added a generous amount of hem in case the wearer decided to change her skirt to a more elegant length.

Left: Ensemble, 1974. (Chester Weinberg for Samuel Robert)

Right: Dress, 1977. (Chester Weinberg for Samuel Robert)

A rocky economy in the early 70s, lead Chester Weinberg to close his couture label in 1974.  For a while he reverted to designing for other people (see the photo above), but in 1977 he relaunched his own label.  This time he concentrated on designing ready-to-wear separates, marketed to middle-class and professional women.

"Style & Spirit" concluded with some examples of his designs for Calvin Klein in the late 70s and early 80s, and the dance costumes he designed for As Time Goes By in 1973.

Tickets are available to see the exhibition for $12 an adult.  Alternatively, if you can't make it, it's possible to buy the exhibition catalogue online.