The ‘art-school feminists’ making New York fashion weird again

Women’s History Museum does not sound like a fashion brand with a clothing label and third-floor vintage clothing boutique on Canal Street — but that’s exactly what it is. Vogue dubbed it “one of the city’s most exciting labels,” and it's beloved by fans for producing clothing that doesn’t exactly look like clothing.

Women’s History Museum designs clothes that almost defy categorization. A recent collection included a bra with birds covering the chest area and a sheer beekeeper-like hat that draped down to the model’s ankles.

The brand's vibe might be best described as “upending the norm,” according to Brooklyn-based fashion designer Amalya Meira, who respects the brand. “They raise questions of authenticity, purpose and function inherent in garments," Meira said.

It’s all “very art-school feminist in the best way possible,” said Olivia Barr, a multimedia artist who loves the label.

Barr said the brand’s silhouettes “make you think they are approaching the body with the awkwardness of a deflated piñata or a ‘50s bullet bra on a blow-up doll that has lost some oxygen somewhere. So those images get charged with meaning.”

At a runway show in September, Women’s History Museum — started by friends Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan — presented its eighth collection at Manhattan’s the Church of the Village to a packed crowd.

Starting at the altar, dead-serious models made their way down a demarcated portion of floor in a series of eye-catching garments, including the bird bra and a chain covering just a vertical sliver of the model’s behind.

Barringer and McGowan said they are trying to make fashion fun again.

“We didn’t experience when it was fun, but I think we’re just fans of the 1980s and the ‘90s, how fashion was,” Barringer said in a recent phone interview.

That is to say, it was less like the sale-obsessed, saturated and social media-pandering corporate fashion world of the present and more like "going to the theater," according to McGowan. She explained that it was less sad and more about fantasy. McGowan's and Barringer's inspirations include Vivienne Westwood, 20471120, Pam Hogg, Norma Kamali, Patrick Kelly and Chantal Thomass.

Actress and activist Rowan Blanchard, 23, has been attending Fashion Week for a decade now. She said that even though it's lost much of its luster over that time, Women's History Museum has reignited her enthusiasm.

"When Mattie and Amanda invited me to walk in their show last February, it revived in me the possibility that fashion can be exciting, theatrical, otherworldly, even fun!" said Blanchard. "I was nervous to walk, I was anxious about not being a sample size. ... All of these things were quelled the second I put on the looks they had for me which I can only describe as armor."

Barringer and McGowan met in the early aughts as NYU undergrads who dressed “weird,” were bummed by the death of New York City's club scene and generally felt “adrift.” They also loved clothes and saw fashion as a delightful artform.

They eventually moved in together in Two Bridges, where they shared a bedroom and closet. “So it was like our little museum,” said Barringer, finishing McGowan’s sentence.

Eventually they started calling the closet the Women’s History Museum. When they started formally collaborating as a brand in 2015, they adopted the name “kind of as a joke,” McGowan said, but also as a “sincere thing.” It stuck.

During the pandemic, they both lost their jobs and went all in on selling vintage clothes online before opening their store in 2023. While selling vintage clothes is still their main form of income, they hope to focus more on selling their own clothes in years to come.

Fashion Week began on Thursday, and Barringer said that this year she and McGowan would be spending it "locked away" working on a show they have at the end of February. They said they don't particularly mind that that show, which is set to take place at a small venue, will happen after Fashion Week is officially over.

“ It's fine if people aren't in town, because also we can't invite as many people,” said Barringer. Still, they both said the the cultural moment is right for a fun show.

“There is something about fashion shows in New York where they can be this kind of place where people gather and get to experience fantasy, and I feel like we're in like a super dark time where that feels kind of important,” McGowan said.