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NEW YORK - Behind every great man, there is a great woman.
That is perhaps one of the most significant points made by "Poiret: King of Fashion," the exhibit opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute next week. Beyond the importance of Denise Poiret during Paul Poiret's creative peak in the 1910s, the show highlights a largely neglected aspect of the designer's creations - the modernity of his garments and their construction.
Poiret's legacy may be the liberation of women from corseted and reinforced 19th-century silhouettes, but Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, with curator Andrew Bolton, are hoping to shake that sense now.
Bolton said the idea for the exhibit came from a sale of Denise Poiret's personal wardrobe at Paris' Piasa auction house in May 2005, and about half the pieces once belonged to her.
"When people normally talk about Paul Poiret, they refer to the fact that he liberated women from corsets, but hobbled their legs with hobble skirts," said Bolton. "What was interesting about the sale was that there was so much more than that. There were jackets with raw...