A comb. A brooch. A vanity set. A gaze in the mirror to realise yourself. Nearby, a lamp, a clock. A music box. A necklace lying in repose. The unassuming ordinariness of everyday objects; rich in their capacity to carry meaning. The dressing room – a site for the routine and ritual of identity-making. It is within this intimate space where habitual acts of self-presentation are shaped through repeated gestures, choices and interactions with material objects, that New York-based Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery situates its ongoing design exhibition, The Semiotics of Dressing.

The group showcase, on view until July 12, 2025, invites people to explore the act of dressing through the dressing room and the varied accoutrements of objects that populate this familiar space. Specially commissioned pieces by seven designers and historical artefacts curated by gallerist Jacqueline Sullivan make up this surreal boudoir. The juxtaposition of contemporary and historic pieces by the decorative arts and design gallery offers a means to foster an “antiquarian inquisitiveness” within the realm of contemporary design, “to inspire a new generation of design patrons”, according to their website. 

The exhibition’s title pays homage to conceptual artist Martha Rosler’s feminist video work, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), which mimics the format of a cooking show, only to subvert it. Dressed as a homemaker, Rosler alphabetically lists kitchen utensils with accompanying gestures that grow increasingly violent. By stripping them of their function, she transforms them into signs—or semiotic carriers—of labour and oppression in the domestic space, traditionally designated as feminine. The Semiotics of Dressing extends this critical lens from the kitchen to a dressing room, another feminine space, with objects such as furniture, lighting, arts and decorative offerings shaping its psychogeography—to investigate how the banal objects, as Sullivan tells STIR, “become the means by which expressions of identity, agency and self-actualisation can emerge in unique ways.”

French theorist Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”—a provocation that finds echo in Judith Butler’s later theory of gender performativity. In Gender Trouble (1990), Butler argues that gender identity is “a stylised repetition of acts” enacted through and on the body. While Butler’s work centres on gender, her insight offers a way of understanding how identity is more broadly constructed through habitual, embodied acts, like the daily ritual of dressing. This resonates with the exhibition’s curatorial statement, where Sullivan notes, “The act of dressing, though an ordinary domestic rite, is an exquisitely choreographed performance. Subtle repeated movements, gestures and tactile engagement with furniture, objects and surrounding space demonstrate a private yet performative way of being.”

The exhibition space is staged as a set: an open linen closet, a dressing table, light sculptures, pendant display, clothing racks—all carefully arranged to mimic the scenography of a dressing room. The 1930s Art Deco wardrobe and Chinoserie dressing screens, along with Cologne-based design collective Gruppe Pentagon’s Gessler clothing rack, form the architectural core of the presentation, grounding it spatially and conceptually. The wardrobe, with its mirrored façade, offers more than storage; it provides the stage for the daily performance of dressing. With its ornate surfaces and a folding structure, the dressing screen creates a cocoon, a private space where one can transform and emerge anew. These, along with furniture such as French architect Jacques Garcia’s metal and glass nightstands, the Racetrack mirror by high-end furniture company The Pace Collection, and French designer Mathieu Matégot’s Copacabana Chair anchor the exhibition in the physicality of a dressing room.

While these pieces define the spatial logic, other objects work more atmospherically. Italian light manufacturer Zonca Voghera’s late 20th century Sunflower Table Lamp is exceptionally breathtaking, its lemon-hued petals casting a warm, tangerine glow that gently softens the space. So is the 1920s Millefiori (thousand-flower) Vase, its surface blooming with intricate floral motifs rendered through age-old Italian glasswork techniques. These objects with motifs that, historically, have also been coded as feminine, evoke associations with beauty and domesticity. They infuse the room with the suspended elegance of a stage, setting the scene for the performance. “The dressing room represents a lexicon of endless meaning and possibility, an open stage where routines and patterns naturally articulate a distinct personal identity,” says Sullivan in an official release.

Against this carefully constructed backdrop, the contemporary designs intervene with materials ranging from metal, textile, glass and found objects. The designers hope to show how dressing is not a purely aesthetic exercise, but a process of metamorphosis. For instance, Paris-based jewellery designer Zoé Mohm’s Comb Study series feature delicate ornamental interventions on antique combs sourced from Parisian flea markets. She transforms the utilitarian tool—typically used for dressing—into something dressed itself, adorning it with jade, coral and handmade silver floral motifs that soften its animal horn teeth. These combs, along with a woven silver scarf necklace and an elegant vanity set, turn the gallery space into a boudoir suspended in time.

In contrast to Mohm, jewellery design artist Gala Colivet Dennison’s heavy and asymmetrical sterling silver brooches forgo ornamental delicacy in favour of an elemental presence. By contrasting two different surface finishes, she invites us to observe how each evolves over time, embracing tarnish, abrasion and wear. In her hands, jewellery becomes not just a symbol of luxury but also a lived material—one that bears the marks of time and use and, in doing so, pulls the wearer to find beauty not despite ageing, but within it.

As if in conversation with the combs and brooches sit three doll’s miser purses, complementing Mohm and Dennison’s pieces. These miniature purses, once part of an opulent 19th-century dollhouse, were, among affluent women, an object for the display of wealth and also a rare site of control and authorship within the domestic sphere. 

Cologne-based designer Hannah Kuhlmann brings sound and light into this space of becoming. Her 6 Winged Bird, a sun-shaped steel music box, plays a soothing melody when the tiger eye pearl is gently tugged, reminding us that music, too, is part of the choreography of dressing. Her Sun pendant and Shell sconce also add to the whimsy of the dressing room décor. Contemporary artist Anne Libby’s works, on the other hand, explore reflective surfaces using metal and fabric. Her wall art pieces juxtapose the polish of corporate interiors with the soft intimacy of the dressing room. While in These Days, polished metal offers a literal reflection, Bearded Iris, by contrast, mimics that reflectivity through satin and batting, creating a softened, tactile illusion. Together, the works question the authenticity of surface and shine, framing reflection as a constructed aesthetic, layered and illusory, much like dressing.

The Semiotics of Dressing also features contributions from Alice Wong, Stephanie Nguyen and Barry Regan—three artists from Oakland’s Creative Growth, a non-profit that supports artists with disabilities. Their contributions might appear to sit outside the conventional frame of dressing, but they expand it, treating appearance and surface as acts of composition and transformation. Nguyen crafts whimsical collaged characters from trinkets—sequins, beads, stones—that turn ornament into narrative. Regan’s piece takes the form of a long, hand-painted paper scroll, suspended like a garment about to be worn. Wong’s postcards transform vintage photographs by layering them in saturated acrylics, re-dressing them as windows, as a gesture perhaps toward the unknown or the unfinished.

The Semiotics of Dressing doesn’t just recreate the intimacy of the dressing room; it quietly invites us to slow down and prompts us to think about what that space means. What are our own rituals of self-presentation? What gestures do we repeat each day? The exhibition offers no fixed answers, only a gentle reminder that identity is something we make, again and again, in the smallest acts of everyday life.