Designer Maria Pinto makes fashion chic Field Museum collection

  There are even a couple of (very) hot pants on the screen, as on Saturday evening (name of each Chicago Club "happening" these days) might be worn.

Here's the rub with the pants, though. They are made of sealskin. They are decorated so with pearls. They were built in Greenland by a craftsman Angmagssalik the Inuit culture, a woman who is probably never in 1,200 miles of Studio 54.

And they are exhibited in the museum, because Chicago designer Maria Pinto from its multitude of backstage, anthropological where a little more than a million objects waiting patiently for a chance to light, but in the end can not be torn darker.

"There are a lot of fur pants that actually in the collection (Field)," said Pinto, who is best known as the designer most popular First Lady Michelle Obama announced. "But I saw the shorts and thought," People need to see. "Each generation of designers think we progressed, and we invented. The reality is that when you cut through the story, it's sad to say, all that has been done."

Well, maybe not quite everything. "Fashion and the Field Museum Collection: Maria Pinto" is an innovative response to a couple of provocative questions: How can something new with a display in a museum? How can we find ways to highlight consistent objects through time and space, instead of the usual mono-cultural way?

Another problem is causing the problem: "How can you bring the collections and to remain faithful to what anthropology is today" Alaka Wali asked the curator in the field of anthropology, North Americans, who co-curated exhibition with Pinto.

"It was a great opportunity to break many boundaries," Pinto said this week officially began after the show for nine months. "I wanted these pieces are displayed. I wanted the viewer to reflect on the songs, instead said that the room was everything."

So, yes, the show is multi-cultural up in Paraguay for a leather belt with tassels and West Africa for a shirt crocodile, and then comparing these 23 designed pieces of land with eight other clothes of Pinto - the a, pants-and-jacket ensemble that are designed specifically for the show.

But the show also broke the rules by almost no evidence. So if you are the source of this simply amazing transparent waterproof seal sutured know the gut for more utilitarian reasons with red thread, you can add a button on the wall or on the screen to record, has a slide parts.

Find out, for example, Pinto is newly developed slim pants sheepskin "alludes to the fur pants" and that the color comes a whole of China's exposure of "male actors hairstyle for opera theater" with its bright red tassels Seussian bejeweled rimming crown.

Or, as Pinto and Wali determined to think only of clothing, such as art objects, without evaluating names.

"Say no to a great work of art, the artist, what to look for," said Pinto. "He is there, and the artist does not say what you take him."

Only the major labels in the gallery: "gut .. Banding Structure," for example, and the call-and-response "Armor Glitter?"

"For us it's an art installation," said Janet Hong, project manager on the floor for exhibitions. "We wanted the people are a little unsure of what they see."