- Title
- Woman's Four-Piece Ensemble (dress, shrug, cape, collar)
- Date Made
- 1980-1989
- Medium
- Silk, figured gauze weave
- Dimensions
- Center back length (Dress): 51 in. (129.54 cm)
Center back length (Cape): 41 1/8 in. (104.46 cm)
38 × 21 1/2 in. (96.52 × 54.61 cm)
Length (Collar): 15 1/2 in. (39.37 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2025.88a-d
- Collecting Area
- Costume and Textiles
- Curatorial Notes
Kaisik Wong was a Chinese American costume designer for experimental theater and a pioneer of San Francisco’s Art to Wear movement. A key retail outlet for his creations was the legendary Union Square boutique Obiko, which Wong cofounded in 1972 with the Japanese American fashion designer and entrepreneur Sandra Sakata. This ensemble bears many of Wong’s hallmarks: jagged curvilinear seaming, dramatic layering, and a glam futurism rooted in tradition, seen here in the form of a figured gauze textile and intricate scrolling ribbonwork on the collar, both borrowed from historic Chinese dress.
Born and raised in Chinatown, Asian aesthetics permeated Wong’s design thinking, despite the fact that his creations departed starkly from mainstream styles. Wong collaborated throughout his career with his close friend and fellow artist Steven F. Arnold, who in 1969 established a midnight film and theater series, the Nocturnal Dream Show, that catapulted The Cockettes, a fledgling drag troupe, to national fame. Wong not only participated in Nocturnal Dream Show performances, he also created costumes and promotional artwork for them. These over-the-top displays caught the attention of the leading artists and tastemakers of the day, among them Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí. Dalí enlisted Arnold and Wong to create performances and displays for the opening of his Theater-Museum in Figueres, Spain, in 1974.
Nicole LaBouff
2024