Artist Frida Kahlo’s clothing on display in Mexico City

Opening this week at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, an exhibition of clothing and jewelry belonging to Mexican artist and style icon Frida Kahlo.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahloexplores the late artist’s relationship with and influence on fashion, displaying 22 items from her wardrobe.

Kahlo’s clothing still bore the faint scent of her perfume and cigarettes when curatorial staff pulled them from drawers and cupboards at the Casa Azul, the artist’s home, now the Frida Kahlo Museum. The show includes dresses, skirts, petticoats, corsets, ribbons, Tehuana shawls and embroidered blouses that display the artist’s bold style, originality and identification with indigenous Mexican people.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) used her clothing to express her identity and zest for life as well as to conceal her emotional and physical pain. Loose blouses concealed the medical corsets she had to wear after multiple surgeries resulting from a catastrophic bus accident suffered when she was 18. Long skirts hid her polio-wizened right leg, which ultimately had to be amputated. Today Frida Kahlo is celebrated not only as one of modernism’s most iconic women artists but as a creative spirit that soared above her excruciating challenges.

Most of Frida’s clothng was custom made, albeit frugally. She bought fabric and took it to Indian seamstresses who transformed it into the brilliantly-embroidered costumes the artist would become famous for. The Tehuana dress was her signature piece, named for the women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Much of Frida’s jewelry were Pre-Columbian pieces given to her by husband, acclaimed muralist Diego Rivera, although an earring on display in the museum exhibit was part of a pair given to her by Pablo Picasso.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo is copresented by Vogue Mexico and the artist is featured on the cover of their November 2012 issue.

Mexico Tourism invites you to experience one of the world’s great cultural destinations and the world of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Most of the sites associated with the artists are located in or near Mexico City: La Casa Azul (Frida Kahlo Museum) in Coyoacán, Dolores Olmedo Museum, Diego Rivera’s Studio and more.

For independent travelers, Mexico Boutique Hotels offers curated accommodation reflecting Mexico’s past and cultural treasures.

Total Vacations offers a five-day Treasures of Frida and Diego Tour year-round. For details, email [email protected] or call toll-free 1-800-769-4147.

In Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario until January 20, 2013, the exhibition Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting is a rare opportunity to see the work of Mexico’s most famous artists displayed together. The show features more than 80 works on paper and paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as well as more than 60 photographs of the couple who shared a passion for each other and Mexico’s revolutionary culture in the 1920s and 1930s.