Corsets and Helvetica

I needed a culture fix. Badly.

So I waited out the sudden rain shower, only to find that once I crossed Belvidere into Carver, everything was bone dry.

Funny how that happens.

Over on Monument Avenue at the Virginia Center for Architecture, the rain was just as absent.

Curious about the new exhibit, "Mutations: The DNA of 20th Century Design," I wanted to see who was worthy of being included.

They had me at the introduction, which stated, "There are notable omissions - please debate ferociously."

I like an exhibition with an attitude, but then it was curated by Roberto Venturo, from whom I once took a class on 20th century architecture called "Modern Romance," so I knew what a clever man he can be.

For that matter a piece of his art (with poet Joshua Poteat) hangs in my living room.

If he's at the root of this show, I'm in.

The exhibit was laid our chronologically by decade highlighting fashion designers, architects and graphic designers who defined each period.

Like designer Paul Poiret, a name I didn't know, but whose efforts I could appreciate since his dress designs liberated women from the constriction of Victorian-era corsets.

Thank you, Paul.

I already knew a fair amount about architect LeCorbusier, but I hadn't known of his insistence as far back as 1926 that all buildings have roof gardens to improve the air quality of city life.

I'm all for picking up that one and running with it again.

Nor had I learned that the famed Eames brothers, Charles and Ray, had been so obsessed with materials and craft in the '40s that when they tried to design a bent plywood chair and the tools and machinery to do so didn't exist, had designed them.

Their mother must have been so proud of such ingenuity.

I got a whole new perspective on Christian Dior's famous "New Look" in the '50s.

His designs were "unapologetically excessive," I read, sometimes employing as much as 50 yards of fabric in one dress.

What was most fascinating was the reason why; it was a reaction to wartime restrictions, a gesture of resilience post-war.

I thrive on that kind of cultural history.

Looking at Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building from 1958, it wasn't much of a stretch to envision women in beautifully excessive Dior dresses dating men who worked in such a modern building.

While I didn't recognize the name Saul Bass, his movie posters were completely familiar.

Hitchcock's "Vertigo," "The Man with the Golden Arm" and a movie I'd just recently seen for the first time, "Bonjour, Tristesse."

His place in film history was apparently assured by his pioneering title sequences in movies.

Now I know.

Another graphic designer whose name meant nothing but work resonated was Massimo Vignelli.

His system maps from the '70s defined D.C.'s Metro for me growing up.

Seems he'd also done the maps for the NYC subway and his geographically inaccurate but easy-to-read maps were known among the designing set for their use of Helvetica.

What I'm saying here is that this exhibit was chock full of nuggets of pop cultural literacy, pure catnip to a nerd like me.

But lest I appear completely self-centered, the exhibit was also a sterling lesson in how great design speaks to a moment in time.

It's only when design lingers in the collective consciousness because it captures the spirit of the best ideas, expressions and practices of a particular time that it becomes timeless.

I don't know who'd want to ferociously debate that.