Fashion and art circles have long been fascinated by the aesthetic sense of Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo. She had an unforgettable personal style: peasant blouses, flowing skirts, floppy ribbons, braided-hair, monobrow. Her times, the 1930s, dictated a whole other look for women defined by form-fitting skirts, coiffed hair-dos, and pencil thin eyebrows.

This signature look of Kahlo's is examined in a new exhibition of her wardrobe going on display in Mexico City after being locked away for nearly 50 years in her armoires and dressers.

Painting smudges and cigarette-smoke scents still are evident on clothes, shoes, jewelry and other of the artist's items in a collection on view at the Frida Kahlo Museum starting Nov. 22 in an exhibit sponsored by Vogue Mexico.

Kahlo's choice of clothing masked some her life's pain. Long skirts hid her right leg, altered by polio and loose blouses hid her corsets worn for back pain from an accident.

"Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo" will show some of the items worn by Kahlo in her self-portraits such as a white corset worn in the poignant "The Broken Column" and an earring given by Pablo Picasso and seen in another image.

“I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best,” noted Kahlo.