Death Becomes Her

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

This Costume Institute exhibition will explore the aesthetic development and cultural implications of mourning fashions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Approximately thirty ensembles, many of which are being exhibited for the first time, will reveal the impact of high-fashion standards on the sartorial dictates of bereavement rituals as they evolved over a century.

The thematic exhibition will be organized chronologically and feature mourning dress from 1815 to 1915, primarily from The Costume Institute's collection, including mourning gowns worn by Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra. The calendar of bereavement's evolution and cultural implications will be illuminated through women's clothing and accessories, showing the progression of appropriate fabrics from mourning crape to corded silks, and the later introduction of color with shades of gray and mauve. (Read more.)

(Via Tiny-Librarian.)