This spring, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents a series of exhibitions showcasing three dynamic moments in fashion that emphasize history, practice, and critique. Judith Leiber: Crafting a New York Story is the first major survey in over 20 years of the designer's iconic career. Counter-Couture: Handmade Fashion in an American Counterculture will spotlight handmade fashions from the 1960s and 1970s, while fashion after Fashion will examine contemporary fashion as a conceptual and critical practice through works by Eckhaus Latta, ensæmble, Lucy Jones, Ryohei Kawanishi, Henrik Vibskov, and SSAW Magazine.

"As a museum with roots in studio craft practice, we are excited to expand our lens to look at fashion-from the couture to the conceptual-as a creative field that has long been invested in craftsmanship, expressiveness, and the symbolic," says Shannon R. Stratton, MAD's William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator. "Our spring chapter explores how fashion practices can have at their bedrock the qualities that we associate with contemporary art and craft. Throughout these exhibitions, audiences will appreciate fashion designers as expert craftspeople, masters of allegory, witty inventors, and sociopolitical artists."

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Counter-Couture: Handmade Fashion in an American Counterculture celebrates the handmade fashion and style of the 1960s and '70s. Often referred to as the hippie movement, the Counterculture swept away the conformism of the previous decade and professed an alternative lifestyle whose effects still resonate today. Moved by the rejection of a materialist and consumerist interpretation of the American Dream, Counterculture youths embraced ideals of self-sufficiency and self-expression. Against the backdrop of Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement, hippies, flower children, and other idealistic young people shunned the cultural standards of their parents, embraced the struggle for racial and gender equality, used drugs to explore altered states of consciousness, and cultivated a renewed dimension of spirituality.

The pursuit of a personal style proved a transcendental tool toward self-realization, enlightenment, and freedom from conventions. Counter-Couture exhibits garments, jewelry, and accessories by American makers who crafted the very reality that they craved, on the margins of society and yet at the center of an epochal shift. The works on display encompass the ethos of members of a generation who fought for change by sewing, embroidering, quilting, patchworking, and tie-dyeing their identity. Putting the handmade at the center of their daily revolution, they embraced and contributed to establishing a folk sensibility in a seminal moment for the development of American Craft.

Counter-Couture: Handmade Fashion in an American Counterculture was organized by the Bellevue Arts Museum and curated by Guest Curator Michael Cepress. It was secured for the Museum of Arts and Design by William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator Shannon R. Stratton with the support of Assistant Curator Barbara Paris Gifford.

udith Leiber: Crafting a New York Story pays homage to craftswoman, designer, and businesswoman Judith Leiber as an enduring icon of the American handbag and fashion industries. The exhibition follows her trajectory from handbag apprentice in Budapest at the outbreak of World War II to venerated female entrepreneur, spotlighting her most iconic works-such as her trademark animal-shaped minaudières-while also exhibiting both her more traditional and experimental forms. The exhibition will examine the practice and the person behind Leiber's cult-like clutches, which are a wardrobe staple of First Ladies and red carpet starlets.

Judith Leiber spent 65 years in the handbag industry. As the only female pattern-maker at that time, and with the unusual ability to make a handbag from start to finish, she brought a distinctly European training and skill set to the United States, where handbags were made with assembly-line skills division. This allowed her not only to succeed as a designer, but also to revolutionize the meaning of handbag craftsmanship for the American consumer.

Leiber's handbags run the gamut from finely crafted leather pieces and textile-based bags to the fantastical Swarovski crystal-encrusted creations for which she is best known. Inspired by a lifelong admiration of art, travel, and opera, her bags include Art Deco-influenced hardware, materials such as Lucite and seashells, and references to the artwork of Piet Mondrian, Georges Braque, and Sonia Delaunay. Leiber also collaborated with visual artist Faith Ringgold on a collection of handbags inspired by Ringgold's quilts.

As Leiber's reputation flourished, designers and suppliers sought her out, offering interesting materials, particularly textiles. Thus, many of her handbags are constructed with obis from Japan, Parsi ribbons from India, and fabrics from Iran and Africa. From the earliest days of her eponymous company, Leiber pushed the boundaries of handbag design. This innovative drive is epitomized by her famed sparkling minaudières, born from a technique used to salvage a group of damaged metal frames, and propelled into popularity by the design of her imaginative animal- and food-themed clutches.

Judith Leiber: Crafting a New York Story includes handbags that encompass the history of Leiber's internationally renowned company, Judith Leiber Handbags, which she founded in 1963 at the age of 42, through 2004, when she designed her last handbag. Although biographical in nature, the exhibition also explores the gendered significance of the handbag in twentieth-century Western culture, and the centrality of immigrant entrepreneurship to the fabric of New York.

Judith Leiber: Crafting a New York Story is curated by MAD's Assistant Curator Samantha De Tillio, with the support of Curatorial Assistant and Project Manager Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy.

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