04/29/2025
For more than 50 years, hidden in the darkness of a locked bathroom in the Blue House, some of Frida Kahlo's most prized possessions remained untouched in that room, just as they were stored after her death. Diego Rivera and his friend Dolores Olmedo wanted it that way, and it wasn't until 2004 that the director of the museum that now houses the artist's home decided to open the treasure chest.
Inside, she discovered more than 6,000 photographs, 12,000 documents, and nearly 300 of the painter's personal items, including clothing, accessories, and cosmetics. Part of these items will be exhibited for the first time outside Mexico at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London starting on February 16.
The exhibition, titled "Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up," showcases the Mexican artist's most significant wardrobe to show the importance of clothing in shaping her image and, above all, how she used clothes to highlight her features and conceal or emphasize her disability. "She wore long skirts to hide her leg, weakened by polio, establishing a very important relationship between her body and clothing from a very early age," explains the curator. Later, when she suffered a tram accident that would cause her multiple physical injuries, this need to use textiles and accessories to her advantage became even more evident.
Her wardrobe was another weapon with which she could assert her position as a woman and artist in a masculine world, while also showing off her figure. One of her favorite outfits was the dress from Tehuantepec, a region southeastern Oaxaca ruled by a matriarchal society. The traditional dress was the Tehuana costume, consisting of three parts: a huipil or geometric blouse, a long skirt with petticoats, and a floral headdress, often complemented by earrings and necklaces.
"Frida establishes a very strong connection with that dress because she concentrated all the accessories on the upper part of her torso as a way of distracting from her broken body," explains the curator. "It was said that she wore that outfit to please Diego, but we discovered that she wore it long before she met him because a photo of her wearing it as a young woman with her entire family surfaced."
Determined to turn her disability into an asset, she began depicting corsets on her canvases and decorating prosthetics with Chinese motifs and dragon embroidery as if they were just another art object. This gesture would inspire designers like Alexander McQueen, who, in his Spring/Summer 1999 show, presented Paralympic athlete **Aimee Mullins** on the catwalk wearing two spectacular carved wooden prosthetics.
The exhibition also features a selection of cosmetics Kahlo often used, such as Revlon compact powder or the Ebony pencil she used to further emphasize her eyebrows.
"She was very fond of American products. They show a very sophisticated side of her; you realize how feminine she was," Henestrosa notes. "She focused a lot of attention on her face. She portrayed herself with Tehuana textiles, and the makeup she depicts herself with in her paintings was the same one she wore in real life."
Many have criticized the male wardrobe based on the famous photo in which Frida Kahlo appears dressed in a man's suit (exhibited at the museum), but the curator reveals that the painter actually preferred more feminine styles. "She really liked to play with appearances. She dressed in her father's suit for that photograph, but it was never seen again."
"What's relevant about showing Frida's wardrobe in Europe and presenting her in this light is that she fought for the ideals we continue to fight for today as women artists," the curator notes. "She has been appropriated by designers, artists, the feminist movement, and popular culture because of everything she represents. She was a mestiza, dark-skinned woman, an artist, and a disabled woman. What's compelling is the intersection of everything she represents: her turbulent marriage to Diego Rivera, her story of heartbreak, her role as wife, lover—she embraces all the representations of women."
