Exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art looks at iconic garments

The Museum of Modern Art is staging an exhibit of iconic clothing and accessories to examine the relationship between fashion and society. On display are 111 high-impact items like Levi’s 501 jeans, the little black dress, the sari, the pearl necklace and even tattoos — all part of the cultural heritage of the West and elsewhere in this century and the 20th. In MoMA’s first exhibit on fashion since 1944, the show features garments that seem timeless, like the Panama hat. But it also includes items from everyday life or those denoting religious affiliation, such as the yarmulke for Jewish men and the headscarf for Muslim women. The exhibit is called “Is Fashion Modern?” It opens Sunday and runs through January 28. It provides a chance to recall how certain garments symbolized what was considered modern in a given period of history.