Why Is Women’s History Museum a Clothing Label?

New York Fashion Week ended weeks ago, but that did not deter the Women’s History Museum from staging a runway show Wednesday night in Chinatown.

Contrary to its name, Women’s History Museum is a New York-based label, not a cultural institution. Founders Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan also have a clothing store at 244 Canal Street, where they sell their garments and vintage designs. Their designs are sometimes sold online, depending on the quantities. The company, which also organizes art exhibitions from time to time, will celebrate its 10-year anniversary this fall. The study of clothing is always the focus, and historical references are entwined in their work.

Fittingly, their latest runway show was titled “Dead Currency” and was held in vacant spaces in the East Broadway Mall, where more than 200 guests turned up. As an added accent, the installations in the storefronts were designed to elicit Roman ruins, fallen monuments and the “not-so subtle crumbling of New York City itself.” With ashen makeup and a few Romanesque designs, some of the models were meant to look as though they were rising up from the ruins. There were also wooden liquor tokens from 1920s and 1930s France to relay memories from that time in contrast to today’s world.

Barringer and McGowan used a variety of coins, including antique French casino chips made with mother of pearl, and pennies, which the Trump administration has suggested the U.S. Treasury phase out. There were also jetons. But unlike the coin-like European ones from centuries past, these were made of cow bones. What’s it all add up to? The designers said the two-sided symbol were meant “to challenge status within fashion, by pointing out its randomness and the precarity of workers within this industry.” And “on the other side of the coin,” they were “celebrating the beauty in obsolete things” and using those things “as raw material to create something new.”

Models in the Women’s History Museum show skipped the traditional runway finale and entered three transformed storefronts, which was supposed to be a wink at the concept the founders used for their inaugural show in 2015, according to a company spokesperson.