There is an elemental democratic impulse in Todd Oldham’s work, the implication that everyone deserves beauty and every outfit deserves to catch the eye.

All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion, at the RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, through September 11.

Installation view of “All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion” at the RISD Museum. Photo: RISD Museum.

by Mary Paula Hunter

The dazzling variety and beauty of the Todd Oldham retrospective, its spectacular array of gowns and outfits, along with handmade buttons and accessories, looks as if it could easily have taken decades of effort. Yet the entire jam-packed collection was made during a single decade; by 2000, Oldham was finished with fashion. It was a frenzied and torrid love affair while it lasted.

Nothing in this retrospective gives the sense that this creative explosion had ended too soon. Designed by Oldham and aptly titled All of Everything, the show reveals an artist who managed to explore just about every aspect of fashion design and production. Even more impressive — Oldham dovetailed fashion with social issues: multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion.

At the onset, the viewer is surrounded by four original videos of Oldham’s light-hearted runway shows. These entertainments proffer a satiric, performative urge that flaunts the sterile image of unsmiling models, poking fun at the conventional idea of walking mannequins. Oldham, who promoted the careers of models of color, including the young Naomi Campbell and drag performers such as RuPaul, encouraged his models to emote as they skipped and swaggered down the runway. The women giggle, comb their hair, and execute Baroque style steps and turns.

Amidst this eye-filling flow of beautiful people and clothes, Oldham is determined to direct and challenge our gaze. Tops that reveal the bottom of the breast as opposed to cleavage are his specialty, along with loose-fitting trousers and short skirts that embrace, with obvious pleasure, the natural curves of the female anatomy. Rather than attempting to emphasize a single image, particularly when the models pause at the end of the runway, Oldham delights in a nonstop parade of angles and curves. His designs are nothing if not dramatic dances of perception.

In the show, Oldham has arranged a breathtaking gallery of mannequins (sixty-six in total) in the mode of a formal French garden. In keeping with the garden motif, two rows of mannequins look like hybrid roses, each a masterpiece of concept and execution. Highlights include Persian Carpet Dress, a piece of clothing inspired by the markets Oldham visited when living with his family in Tehran as a teen. This dress, in deep hues of red, blends motifs from five Persian rugs. As if to honor the tradition of Persian rug making, Oldham adds a train to the dress in the shape and design of a small rug. Overall, the creation is a riot of detail, bedazzling the eye with a profusion of beads, crystals, and embroidery. The piece also effortlessly blends ancient culture with the ’90s DIY movement. The intricate stitchery, with its nuanced designs and beading, is about keeping craftwork alive and relevant.

Installation view of “All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion” at the RISD Museum. Photo: RISD Museum.

Another example of the DIY spirit is Love Ball Dress, a work made up of interwoven pipe cleaners. Here Oldham’s interest in combining the simple and sophisticated works on several levels. Pipe cleaners, play material for children, are intricately manipulated to create a party dress that’s so lush it looks like velvet. Oldham created the dress for a friend to wear at the Love Ball, a fund-raising event to combat the AIDS epidemic. This fun and beautiful piece is intertwined with tragedy.

Oldham’s work is decidedly postmodern in its blend of popular and high culture. Hierarchy and rank have no set place in his creative universe. (Oldham has said that he hates formal wear.) Still, his creations sparkle, shimmer, and smack of elegant tailoring. There is an elemental democratic impulse in his work, the implication that everyone deserves beauty and every outfit deserves to catch the eye.

Old Master – New Mistress Ensemble is an example of Oldham’s exhilarating egalitarianism, his impish mix of high and low. In his description of the piece (all of the show’s labels are written by the designer), Oldham states that the skirt was inspired by an episode of the Three Stooges he saw in his youth, in which the pratfall-ers were mistaken for fashion designers. On the front is an embroidered version of the Mona Lisa and on the back is a sequined version of a thrift store painting. Oldham tops the culture clash off with a silk blouse whose hand-made buttons are plated in 24-carat gold. In this and other dresses, All of Everything, the first major exhibition dedicated to “the aesthetic of Oldham’s runway opus of the 1990s,” lives up to its name — elegant and pedestrian, meticulously crafted and tossed-off, campy and oh-so-beautiful.

Mary Paula Hunter lives in Providence, RI. She’s the 2014 Pell Award Winner for service to the Arts in RI. She is a choreographer and a writer who creates and performs her own text-based movement pieces.