This is nothing like the old black, as this exhibit at the Met demonstrates.

With what Vanity Fair called ‘a perfect little black cocktail dress of a show’, the museum’s Costume Institute has, after a hiatus of seven years, returned to mounting an autumn exhibition in addition to its annual spring show. Drawn primarily from the Met’s permanent collection, the small but elegant exhibition in the Tisch and Apfel Galleries consists of some thirty beautifully preserved ensembles (many on view for the first time), accompanied by accessories and illustrations. Together they explore the development, cultural impact, and significance of bereavement fashions and rituals from 1815 to 1915.

Organized chronologically, the show highlights Queen Victoria’s mourning attire. From the death of her husband, Albert, in 1861 until her own demise some forty years later, she wore all black, all the time.

If Victoria seems to have codified mourning rituals, standards of bereavement attire were developing well before 1837, when she ascended the throne. By the late Middle Ages in Europe, black not only signified bereavement, it also indicated class status since deep black dye was expensive.

Although most of the mourning attire in the Tisch Gallery is from later in the nineteenth century, several pieces date from around 1830. These include a young girl’s black silk crêpe mourning dress. Its full puffed sleeves reflect the style of the day.

Also from this period are a black wool broadcloth tailcoat and trousers (one of the exhibit’s few examples of male fashion). Since men normally wore dark clothing, their bereavement wardrobe required comparatively slight and subtle alterations, including black hatbands and other black accessories like the bow tie and gloves on display.

Although men could come out of mourning and remarry in a matter of months, women went through strictly regulated stages of mourning over a period of two and a half years. The rigid sexist code required that women mark each phase with different fabrics, styles, and what seems like fifty shades of black. If this attire signified grief, social position, economic standing and respectability, it also advertised sexual experience and availability for marriage. It was clear that these widows were going places.

Of particular interest are the items on display in the Apfel Gallery. Unlike the pieces in the adjoining Tisch Gallery, the items here are encased (presumably for preservation and protection) in glass. And unlike the mannequins in the main gallery, the mannequins here are, for some unfathomable reason, headless.

The centre case shows off several black-on-black dresses from the 1820s including a chic British example in black silk-crêpe chiffon. Black silk-velvet Scottish mourning dresses from the 1820s incorporate fashionable details, such as puffed sleeves and fancy hems. As accompanying plates, paintings, portraits and illustrations demonstrate, these garments resembled – in everything except colour- the stylish cuts and silhouettes of the day.

In the jewellery cases are memorial rings, pins, bracelets and pendants dating from 1810. Signifying loss and remembrance, this jewellery incorporated portrait miniatures or personal mementos such as hair, which was either ground into paint, braided or woven into decorative designs.

Inspired by a vibe that is decidedly Gothic, the clothing and accessories on display are impressive. I share the sentiments of the reviewer from V Magazine who quipped, “I sincerely wish I could shop the Met’s latest exhibition.”

Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 21 October 2014 – 1 February 2015.