Peeking in the Closet of Mexico's Frida Kahlo Lydia Carey - The News
go to original March 16, 2013

Frida Kahlo's Blue House Museum in Mexico (charlycheer)

Does a woman’s wardrobe reveal her true personality? What would strangers say, poring over the clothes in your closet? “Appearances Can be Deceiving: Frida Kahlo’s Wardrobe,” currently on display at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Coayacán, tells the story of Frida Kahlo’s life through what she wore.

The exhibit’s five rooms “focus on the construction of Kahlo’s style through disability, tradition, fashion and dress,” the museum’s placards say. The texts describe a woman whose life was a physical and emotional struggle, which ended in a wheelchair and finally a bed.

When Kahlo was 6, she contracted polio, which withered her right leg, leaving it permanently shorter than the left; she wore extra socks and a special elevated shoe to make it appear normal. Then when she was 18, a streetcar hit the bus she was riding in and a steel handrail went through the left side of her body, piercing her abdomen and uterus. Her spinal column, collarbone and left foot were broken in the accident. Kahlo had 22 surgeries from the time she had polio to her death.

The exhibit’s first gallery shows how this “body less than perfect,” as she called it, determined the first layer Kahlo put on every day. In their display cases, the leather and metal corsets she wore to support her weak spine look like dinosaur ribcages at a natural science museum. Beside them, her leg brace and crutches.

Read the whole story at The News

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