Style and Spirit: Adelaide show shines a light on forgotten fashion star Chester Weinberg
Chester Weinberg was a fashion icon, but when the US designer died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986, stigma surrounding the disease forced his work into the shadows. Now, a new Adelaide display aims to change that, reintroducing his creations to lovers of vintage fashion.
An exhibition featuring the garments of little-known yet iconic American fashion designer Chester Weinberg has just opened at the David Roche Museum in North Adelaide.
Style and Spirit: The Fashion of Chester Weinberg features more than 50 items made by the influential couturier, who created his pieces from the 1950s to the 1980s in New York.
Weinberg’s contemporaries included famous fashion designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga, Christian Dior and Pierre Cardin, and his cutting-edge designs were worn by high-profile stars including singer and actor Barbra Streisand, former first lady Nancy Reagan, and New York socialites like Babe Paley and philanthropist Judy Peabody.
But after he became one of the first-known designers to die of an AIDS-related illness in 1985, when ignorance and fear shaped the public response, the designer’s name was largely written out of the history books, pushed to the shadows by stigma and shame.
Chester Weinberg was one of the most respected and high-profile designers of his time.However, Style and Spirit, curated by David Roche Museum curator Timothy Roberts and Skye Bartlett, team manager of SAMESH (South Australian Mobilisation + Empowerment for Sexual Health), aims to rectify that injustice and shine a light on Weinberg’s remarkable fashion legacy.
“This exhibition seeks to reintroduce Weinberg’s inspiring career to lovers of vintage fashion and reduce stigma around HIV/AIDS,” Roberts says.
“We have about 60 garments ranging from his earliest days as soon as he left Parsons School of Design, where he studied in New York, and his first job under designer Leonard Arkin, going through the various designers he worked under in Seventh Avenue, to the years that he spent with his own couture house.
“He was at the peak of his career in the 1960s, running his own business from 1966 to 1975. At the time he was featured in Vogue magazine every month, and he’s held in the same esteem as people that we regard today as the big names of fashion, people like Oscar de la Renta, Geoffrey Beene, Bill Blass. So, in his lifetime, he really was very highly regarded.”
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Chester Weinberg dresses with Julian Tomchin fabrics, 1968.Most of the pieces on display are from private collections, mainly in Adelaide, but highlights include ballet costumes on loan from the Royal Ballet in London, which were designed by Weinberg. There is some French couture on loan from private collectors in the UK.
“We also have a small selection of garments from when Weinberg was designing for other brands,” Roberts says. “In the mid 1970s, the bottom fell out of the American economy and Weinberg realised that he would be able to earn a significant amount of money designing for other people.”
One of those people was jeans icon Calvin Klein, who approached Weinberg in 1981 to be the head designer for Calvin Klein Jeans, then the largest fashion brand in the world.
“So, Weinberg’s designing in an exciting time for American fashion. We see the introduction of the mini dress and the mini skirt. And even though he was not a fan of that, he still designs these very high-hem lines.
“He designs garments that have beautiful finishes, and he’s using exquisite fabrics that were produced by the best manufacturers… He’s using Moygashel linen from Ireland, and he’s creating these garments with beautiful prints used by leading fashion designers in Paris at the same time.
“We’ve got a wonderful dress in the exhibition that is made from fabric that was used by Yves Saint Laurent the same year. This really shows that Weinberg was really on top of his game, not just in the United States but internationally.”
A Chester Weinberg suit, circa 1969, owned by socialite Babe Paley.One of Roberts’ favourite items in the exhibition is a silk organza day dress in bright pink.
“It employs a fabric designed by another American designer that Weinberg used on several occasions, Tzaims Luksus,” he says. “He based the fabric design on Persian carpet designs, except he put them in hyper-technicolour.
“So, there’s that violent pink, there’s a vibrant orange, and there’s these kind of strobing blues and greens through it as well. I think it’s just a beautiful dress and it’s a really wearable garment as well.
“Another of my favourites is a classic evening gown with these long sleeves, rather like a kimono or an imperial robe from China. It’s a really elegant gown that has a metal belt around it and it’s in the most sublime cream-coloured slubbed silk.”
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A Chester Weinberg dress from 1970, made with Tzaims Luksus fabric.As well as the fashion items, the exhibition includes paintings and antiques, to give further context to the era of design.
“Many of the people who wore Weinberg’s garments in the 1960s and ’70s had beautiful homes filled with beautiful art collections,” Roberts says. “What we’ve done to pay tribute to that is we’ve taken works from the David Roche Collection and we’ve included them throughout the display.
“So, visitors will go into this exhibition, and they’ll see the garments, hopefully, in a way in which they were worn in these wonderful New York interiors in the ’60s and ’70s.”
Co-curator Timothy Roberts in the David Roche Museum exhibition space with a selection of pieces from Style and Spirit: The Fashion of Chester Weinberg.Roberts has created labels throughout the exhibition which reference facts around HIV/AIDS, as well as more general pieces of information such as when the Sydney Opera House was built and when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, to further contextualise the world in which Weinberg worked.
Explaining the extent of the stigma around the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Roberts points out that many in the industry would simply deny it when someone in their fashion house died of the disease.
“Former US President Ronald Reagan didn’t even use the term AIDS until 1987, yet his wife Nancy Reagan was an incredibly fashionable woman, and yes, she did own Chester Weinberg garments,” he says. “The Reagans famously ignored their friend Rock Hudson’s pleas for help, and they largely ignored HIV/AIDS until it was a major health issue.
Chester Weinberg’s work and legacy was shrouded in the stigma of his AIDS-related illness and death.“It wasn’t really until [American designer Roy] Halston died in 1990 that we started seeing this admittance that something had gone wrong and that the fashion industry needed to come to terms with this. That’s when they started the massive fundraiser in New York called ‘Seventh on Sale’, which still happens to this day.”
Weinberg fashions can still be purchased on the vintage market, with a price tag of $500 to $5000, depending on their condition.
“There’s one particular dress that I did the maths on, a little black lace dress from 1967, when it retailed for $300 US dollars, which is the equivalent of about $4000 today,” Roberts says.
He says Weinberg designs are now also being snapped up by museums across the globe.
“Weinberg’s work is in an interesting stage of transition. There are people who are still wearing these beautiful things, but these garments are entering these hallowed halls of our museum collections as well.”
A Chester Weinberg day dress from 1971 with Andree Brossin de Mere fabric.“It is really special to be able to bring somebody’s work and bring somebody’s life back out into public knowledge.
“When it comes to my art history and art writing, I have a little mantra that I work by, and that is that ‘we know more than we did yesterday’. I hope that every visitor who comes through the gallery walks out knowing a little more than they did yesterday, whether it be about HIV, whether it be about American fashion, or indeed, about what their own personal sense of style is.”
Style and Spirit: The Fashion of Chester Weinberg is on at the David Roche Museum from November 8 to January 25, 2025.