Going bold at the Brooklyn Museum

For those befuddled by fashion etiquette, a quick Ms. Manners search can define “cocktail attire” or “black tie”—but what does “dress bold” mean? This directive on the invitation for the Brooklyn Museum’s annual Brooklyn Artists Ball, which honoured the artist Nick Cave and Bank of America, yielded a variety of interpretations. While the museum’s director Anne Pasternak gamely, as ever, sported a metallic orchid-coloured suit (and took the stage to introduce the honourees to Missy Elliott’s “Work It”), many of the guests dressed after Frida Kahlo, the evening’s inspiration and subject of the current show Appearances Can Be Deceiving. (It was trippy to wander through the galleries and spot a Frida lookalike contemplating one of her portraits.) But the boldest attire of all was surely the performer in the New York-based artist Olek’s crocheted “environment”, who spent the evening crocheting and then unwinding colourful yarn over his nude body.