Reveling in the fleeting moment of “now,” paper dresses of the 1960s offered a shiny new page of futuristic simplicity during fashion’s most tumultuous decade. An unlikely marriage of avant-garde design and the promotional arms of corporate paper manufacturers, they were also testament to a society-wide belief in the utopian fruits of technology. “Generation Paper: A Fashion Phenom of the 1960s” originated at the Phoenix Art Museum (PAM), where it began to take shape in 2021, after Phoenix collector Kelly Ellman presented the museum with 85 paper garments—mostly unworn, often in their original packaging. She’d amassed them over 30 years, buying from other collectors as well as specialty stores and the on-line digital market. Now the show comes to the Museum of Arts and Design, with new additions taking the place of pieces that were too fragile to travel. —Joel Lobenthal

Generation Paper: Fashion of the 1960s was featured in the March 18, 2023 issue of Air Mail. Read on