A special and deeply personal aesthetic taste, developed throughout the years to take care of her physical issues. Her originality became an archetype to emulate and inspired fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen and D&G, and fashion bloggers from all over the world. Frida Khalo was more than just an eclectic painter and artist. Her personality, expressed through her dresses, accessories and personal items, will be displayed at an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “Making Her Self Up” will be the first exhibition dedicated to her personal sphere outside of Mexico, her homeland, with new unreleased objects. The curators worked closely with the Frida Khalo Museum to display more than 200 items from the artist’s Casa Azul. These include clothing, letters, jewels, cosmetics, medicines and corsets that were discovered only 50 years after her husband Diego Rivera permanently closed the residence following her death in 1954.
Besides pre-Colombian necklaces and hand-made corsets, you will be able to admire her cosmetics, still conserved in their original packaging. Among them, for example, her eye pencil “Ebony”, used by the artist to paint her legendary mono-brow, a distinctive trait in all her self-portraits. There's also her Hulpll shirts, shawls, huge colourful skirts and prothesis found in the current Casa Azul museum inside wardrobes that have been sealed for more than 50 years. Claire Wilcox, Senior Curator of Fashion at the V&A and co-curator of the exhibition, claims that: “Symbol of counter-culture and feminism, Frida crafted her own personality with the items showcased in this exhibition, not only through her paintings. This is a rare opportunity for visitors as it offers access to a world never seen before”. The cherry on top is that the exhibition is set up just like Khalo’s house, Casa Azul in Coyoacàn, Mexico City, where she was born, lived and died. The house also includes pictures from when the artist was a child and from her wedding with Rivera, together with her first paintings, pictures of the couple and of her friends, including communist leader Leon Trotsky.
