Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?

Famous for her elaborate self-portraits, which often depict her in colorful settings and regal or outrageous costumes, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was as given to performative couture in life as she was in art. Her mixing and matching of long, traditional Mexican Tehuana dresses with European fashions made her a style icon — but her reasons for wearing long skirts is less well known. Kahlo survived two major bodily traumas as a young person: One of her legs was shortened and withered by a childhood case of polio, and she was impaled by a handrail in a bus accident at the age of 18. Both ordeals left her bedridden for long periods, and she had many surgeries. But if her physical limitations angered and frustrated her, they also opened her mind creatively. As a child she would breathe against her bedroom window and trace a door in the condensation, through which she’d escape in her imagination.