“Handsome man. Russian fashionista at the theater. Exhibition “Handsome Man. Russian fashionista of the mid-18th – early 20th centuries

April 4, 2018 at 16.00 in the Sheremetevsky Palace (Fontanka River embankment, 34) will open exhibition “Handsome man. Russian fashionista at the theater", dedicated to the phenomenon of male panache in Russia, famous fashionistas of Russian literature and theater, images of the dandy theater stage late XVIII – early XX centuries. For the exhibition, the Alexandrinsky Theater provided more than 50 authentic ancient costumes and parts of men’s wardrobe from the late 18th to early 20th centuries, which were used in many performances and have now become part of the cultural and historical heritage. Silk-embroidered satin camisoles and velvet caftans trimmed with metallic lace, skillfully corded Hungarian jackets and luxurious house dressing gowns, frock coats and tailcoats of the finest English cloth, elegant vests from the best French tailors, removable collars and cuffs and many different little things will again appear before the public, just like many years ago, when recognized masters and ordinary extras of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters (not only the Russian drama troupe, but also the ballet, as well as the St. Petersburg Italian Opera, French drama) appeared on stage in these costumes.
Each suit has its own unique creative biography, some of the stages of which we can learn from the inscriptions preserved on the lining. Sometimes inside one suit you can read the names of very different actors: middle or late XIX century, beginning of the twentieth century, war and post-war years.
Until the end of the 19th century, artists often appeared on stage in their own clothes, their fashion accessories becoming elements of the theatrical image. Personal belongings of V.V. Samoilova, K.A. Varlamova, N.N. Fignera, F.I. Stravinsky, F.I. Chaliapin are side by side with their stage costumes, portraits and photographs, creating standard images of a “handsome man”. The theatrical plot of the exhibition would be incomplete without literary heroes: from Onegin and Chatsky to Antropka from “Fashion Shop” by I.A. Krylova. Their incarnations on the stages of St. Petersburg theaters over the course of a century have been carefully studied and reflected in the exhibition.
The prologue to the historical part of the exhibition will be a theatrical “black office” with a gallery of portraits famous actors and directors XX – beginning of the XXI centuries, tastemakers and idols of the general public.
In the project “Handsome Man. Russian fashionista at the theater" also takes part in the Peterhof State Museum, the State Museum of A. S. Pushkin (Moscow), All-Russian Museum A. S. Pushkin (St. Petersburg), State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Theater Library, Russian national library, Bolshoi Museum drama theater, Theater Museum named after. Lensovet, the museum of the theater-festival “Baltic House”, the magazines “Sobaka.ru” and “Caravan of Stories”.

Galina Tsvetaeva reviews: 251 ratings: 253 rating: 322

On Mondays, almost all museums are closed. And I have two hours of free time. I was in the center, I remembered the exhibition hall of the Historical Museum, it turned out to be closed without any announcements. Turning around, I saw a poster at the War of 1812 Museum for the exhibition “Handsome Man” and decided to visit this exhibition. It's a pity there was no excursion. But it was interesting enough anyway. The exhibition is divided into three parts: petimeter, dandy, decadence. Lots of explanatory information. All exhibits are well lit, you can approach them all and look closely at them. First section: petimeters. Not only are items of clothing from the Alexander Vasiliev Foundation (Vilnius) presented, but the portraits clearly show what men of the petimeter period looked like. Surprisingly, the men were not very large, judging by their costumes. And they had a ton of different decorations. One can only be surprised at the quantity. The next section is dandy. I immediately remembered Pushkin: “Like a dandy Londoner dressed - and finally saw the light.” You can immediately imagine social life, balls, clubs, receptions - idle life young rake. How many different bottles, devices, cane knobs with secrets in which knives, nail files, and so on were stored. Then decadence with its sophistication and sophistication. How beautifully preserved are the top hats, hats, and underwear. It's hard to imagine how it survived. Great things for golf, playing sports was fashionable.
I really liked the things from the British School of Design. What talented designers we have. The things they created are incomparable, combining shockingness and practicality. They can and should be worn and introduced into mass production. Bright colors decorate life and improve your mood. It's great that at least a few people wear this.
The exhibition is of interest to everyone who cares about fashion and its development, who wants to take a fresh look at old things and find something for themselves in new things.
Two hours flew by unnoticed because it was interesting. Thanks to the organizers for the fascinating presentation of the material and my admiration for the designers of the British School of Design.

Nadezhda Nikolaeva reviews: 21 ratings: 21 ratings: 4

We visited the exhibition at the State Historical Museum - “Handsome man. Russian fashionista mid-18th century- the beginning of the twentieth century." This is the first major project in Russia, entirely dedicated to the history of men's fashion. The exhibition presents more than 600 items. Among the exhibits are examples of men's dresses and underwear, there are modern suits, jewelry and fashion accessories, appearance care products, paintings, engravings, photographs, cartoons, magazines and books. All men's dresses are made from natural fabrics: cloth, wool, brocade, silk, satin. And the buckles for the shoes are a masterpiece! And the snuff boxes, and the embroidered vests, caftans. , wallets and wallets - all this is a real work of art. What craftswomen and craftsmen were! This is how our Russian fashionistas dressed! In the novel “Eugene Onegin” Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin writes about the newest Russians: “... Dashing fashion, our tyrant, the disease of the newest ones.” Russians!" Just think two hundred years ago - there were new Russians, with an invincible passion for fashion. Fashion extends not only to clothes, shoes. Everything external is fashion, these are fashionable writers, artists, poets, etc. To lag behind fashion, For many it means falling behind in life. This is how it was in Pushkin’s time, and this is how it is in our times.
There are a lot of interesting things to consider, I recommend it and it’s better with a guide, a different perception, the exhibits come to life.

Maya Sugakova reviews: 27 ratings: 27 rating: 15

Analysis of passions.
“Fandorin dressed as an inconspicuous Englishman: a black bowler hat, a black jacket, black trousers, a black tie. In Moscow, perhaps, he would have been mistaken for an undertaker, but in London, presumably, he would pass for an invisible man.” Boris Akunin "Azazel"
On Red Square in the Historical Museum there is an exhibition “Handsome for a man Russian fashionista of the mid-18th and early 20th centuries.” The exhibition is NOT stuffed with antique objects and weapons, it is laconic and slightly cold, in the three huge rooms of the exhibition hall there is modest lighting, as it is said famous writer, that “a noble husband remembers: dignity is not in what happens to you, but in how you behave!” . There are three rooms at the exhibition where insignia of clothing and accessories are collected, when something French was fashionable, and then something English, and then fashion united with all foreign habits and became different. It’s great that at the exhibition I didn’t find any inscriptions of “hackneyed” phrases about how everything in a person should be beautiful, about how beauty will save the world, and other standard well-known phrases. In the inscriptions above ancient objects you can read other interesting passages and quotes from primary sources of that time. I learned a new, but already outdated for us, word “five meters”, which means young secular dandies, dandies, imitating everything French. “Here was the favorite place of Moscow dandies - five meters, as they were called by the then satirical literature" E. Radzinsky, “Princess Tarakanova”. An officer’s uniform, jewelry, the ability to tie a tie in several ways, look through a lorgnette in a timely manner, properly powder a wig, put on a hat, including a straw hat, which must be EXCLUSIVELY with a black ribbon, mannered sniffing tobacco, taking out an elegant snuffbox, sneezing at the caricatures of those times in which fashion and fashionistas were ridiculed, being able to dance tango and be an athlete - all these are signs of a time of decadence, dandyism and courtliness. Several objects seemed extremely bulky to me, and some behind the glass seemed slightly fragile and frail, such were the dimensions of the handsome men of that time. The connection between five meters and modernity - several exhibits of the British school, and they are so good in everything that you are amazed at the talents of the Russian land in a foreign land. After the exhibition, near the exit, there is a book of reviews in which guests write down their impressions, I ask you to leave time to look through it, believe me, it is no less interesting in its details than the exhibition, which will last until the end of July.

Sheremetev Palace - Museum of Music

(Fontanka embankment, 34)

A major exhibition project of the St. Petersburg Museum of Theater and musical art"Handsome man. Russian fashionista at the theater" is dedicated to the phenomenon of male panache in Russia, famous fashionistas of Russian literature and theater, images of dandies and dandies on the theater stage of the late 18th - early 20th centuries. This project inherited the theme, name and a significant part of the exhibits from the exhibition of the State historical museum, which was brilliantly held in Moscow in 2017. However, the new curatorial concept dictates significant differences in the subject range of the exhibition: the Museum of Theater and Musical Art explores not so much men's everyday fashion, but its reflection on the stage, its influence on theatrical language different eras from caricatures of fashionable ladies' men to the emergence and development of the role of the hero-lover.

The grand opening of the exhibition “Handsome Man. Russian Fashionista at the Theater” will take place at the Sheremetev Palace - Museum of Music on April 4 at 16.00.

The trends of any time are especially clearly and clearly manifested on the theater stage: literary tastes and manner of expression, topical events and fashion trends take on a striking form in the theater, shown enlarged, as if under a magnifying glass. Theatrical projections of men's fashion different styles and eras make it possible to clearly discover how public ideas about the ideal man- a handsome man, a war hero or a hero-lover. The exhibition of the Museum of Theater and Musical Art "Handsome Man. Russian Fashionista at the Theater" focuses on this task. The St. Petersburg project, without repeating the exhibition of the State Historical Museum, writes a new chapter fascinating story, is a kind of sequel to the Moscow blockbuster exhibition.

In the St. Petersburg series of the project “Handsome Man” there are three storylines. One of them is connected with the history of things, everyday little things in the era of Fonvizin, Pushkin, Ostrovsky or Chekhov. Along with kaftans, camisoles, dress tailcoats and other elements of a men's wardrobe, special attention will be given to canes and powder flasks, signets and buckles, headpieces and men's corsets, nail and ear cleaning devices, powder compacts, muslin boxes and ballroom notebooks- things that are so necessary for every fashionista, which now look outlandishly exotic. Separate cameo episodes are devoted to a variety of smoking accessories, glasses and lorgnettes, and pocket watches of the 18th-20th centuries.

The memorial plot of the exhibition is a natural continuation of the “history of men’s little things.” Portrait of P.Ya. Chaadaev, vest A.S. Pushkin, fez M.I. Glinka, cane A.N. Ostrovsky, pince-nez A.K. Glazunov, V.V. ring Samoilov or snuffbox F.I. Chaliapin play leading roles in the exhibition-performance, becoming narrators of entire stories about their famous owners and their attitude to fashion.

The belongings of famous actors are a subject of special curatorial interest. Until the end of the 19th century, artists often appeared on stage in their own clothes, their fashion accessories becoming elements of a theatrical image - whether sublime, tragic or comedic caricature. Personal belongings of V.V. Samoilova, K. A. Varlamova, N.N. Fignera, F.I. Stravinsky, F.I. Chaliapin are side by side with their stage costumes, portraits and photographs, creating standard images of a “handsome man”. The theatrical plot of the exhibition would be incomplete without literary heroes: from Onegin and Chatsky to Antropka from I.A.’s Fashion Shop. Krylova. Their incarnations on the stages of St. Petersburg theaters over the course of a century have been carefully studied and reflected in the exhibition.

With the help of theatrical sketches - reconstructions of men's costume of the 18th-19th centuries - you can see how the past changes under the gaze of one or another modernity. Versions of "historical" costumes of the 18th-19th centuries performed by artists of the "World of Art", Soviet post-avant-garde, socialist realism or "thaw" give the exhibition additional volume, intrigue, revealing the relativity of popular ideas about history and asserting the superiority of artistic truth over the truth of life - according to at least in the theater.

Gallery of photographic portraits of modern “handsome men” - from G.A. Tovstonogov to F.S. Ruzimatov - serves as a prologue to the main exhibition, as if hinting: “Everything flows, but nothing changes.”

Participants and partners of the project "Handsome man. Russian fashionista at the theater": State Museum-Reserve "Peterhof", State Museum of A.S. Pushkin (Moscow), All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin (St. Petersburg), State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Theater Library, Russian National Library, Alexandrinsky Theater, Bolshoi Drama Theater, Theater named after. Lensoveta, Theater-festival "Baltic House", Maly Drama Theater - Theater of Europe, Magazine "Sobaka.ru". We express our gratitude to the photographers who took part in the project: Valery Plotnikov, Valentin Baranovsky, Yuri Belinsky and others.

A major exhibition project of the St. Petersburg Museum of Theater and Musical Art “Handsome Man. Russian fashionista at the theater" is dedicated to the phenomenon of male panache in Russia, famous fashionistas of Russian literature and theater, images of dandies and dandies on the theater stage of the late 18th - early 20th centuries. This project inherited the theme, name and part of the exhibits from the exhibition of the State Historical Museum, which was brilliantly held in Moscow in 2017. However, the new curatorial concept dictates significant differences in the subject range of the exhibition: the Museum of Theater and Musical Art explores not so much men's everyday fashion as its reflection on the stage, its influence on the theatrical language of different eras from caricatures of fashionable ladies' men to the emergence and development of the role hero-lover.
The trends of any time are especially clearly and clearly manifested on the theater stage: literary tastes and manner of expression, topical events and fashion trends take on a striking form in the theater, shown enlarged, as if under a magnifying glass. Theatrical "expressions" of men's fashion of different styles and eras make it possible to clearly reveal how during the late 18th - early 20th centuries, public ideas about the ideal man - a handsome man, a war hero or a hero-lover - changed. The exhibition of the Museum of Theater and Musical Art “Handsome Man. Russian fashionista at the theater." The St. Petersburg project, without repeating the exhibition of the State Historical Museum, writes a new chapter of a fascinating history, and is a kind of sequel to the Moscow blockbuster exhibition.
In the St. Petersburg series of the “Handsome Man” project, three storylines can be traced. One of them is connected with the history of things, everyday little things in the era of Fonvizin, Pushkin, Ostrovsky or Chekhov. Along with kaftans, camisoles, dress coats and other elements of a men's wardrobe, special attention will be given to canes and powder flasks, signets and buckles, headpieces and men's corsets, nail and ear cleaning devices, powder boxes, powder boxes and ballroom notebooks - items so necessary for every fashionista, which now look strangely exotic. Separate cameo episodes are devoted to a variety of smoking accessories, glasses and lorgnettes, and pocket watches of the 18th-20th centuries.
The memorial plot of the exhibition is a natural continuation of the “history of men’s little things.” Portrait of P. Ya. Chaadaev, vest of A. S. Pushkin, fez of M. I. Glinka, cane of A. N. Ostrovsky, pince-nez of A. K. Glazunov, ring of V. V. Samoilov or snuff box of F. I. Chaliapin are played by the presenters roles in the exhibition-performance become narrators of entire stories about their famous owners and their attitude to fashion.
The belongings of famous actors are a subject of special curatorial interest. Until the end of the 19th century, artists often appeared on stage in their own clothes, their fashion accessories becoming elements of a theatrical image - whether sublime, tragic or comedic caricature. Personal belongings of V.V. Samoilov, K.A. Varlamov, N.N. Figner, F.I. Stravinsky, F.I. Chaliapin are adjacent to their stage costumes, portraits and photographs, creating standard images of “handsome men”. The theatrical plot of the exhibition would be incomplete without literary heroes: from Onegin and Chatsky to Antropka from I. A. Krylov’s “Fashion Shop”. Their incarnations on the stages of St. Petersburg theaters over the course of a century have been carefully studied and reflected in the exhibition.
The prologue to the historical part of the exhibition will be a theatrical “black cabinet” with a gallery of portraits of modern “handsome men”. Photos of famous actors and directors of the 20th - early 21st centuries, tastemakers and idols of the general public - from G. A. Tovstonogov, V. I. Strzhelchik, I. O. Gorbachev to F. S. Ruzimatov and D. V. Kozlovsky - will be placed in a row, as in the foyer of a real theater. Photographs taken by brilliant masters Valery Plotnikov, Valentin Baranovsky, Yuri Belinsky and other photographers will provide a reference point for the viewer as he journeys through the styles and eras of men’s fashion, as if hinting: “Everything flows, but nothing changes.”
In the project “Handsome Man. Russian fashionista at the theater" is attended by the Peterhof State Museum of Art, the State Museum of A. S. Pushkin (Moscow), the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin (St. Petersburg), the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg Theater Library, the Russian National Library Alexandrinsky Theater, Bolshoi Drama Theater Museum, Theater Museum. Lensovet, the museum of the theater-festival “Baltic House”, the magazines “Sobaka.ru” and “Caravan of Stories”. St. Petersburg state museum theatrical and musical art will present at the exhibition rare costumes from the wardrobe of the imperial theaters, sketches of scenery and costumes, posters, theater programs and photographs from different times, pieces of jewelry. Many of the exhibits will be shown to the public for the first time.