With its red carpet stuffed with stars in improbable outfits, the Met Gala tends to overshadow the fashion exhibition that it nevertheless serves to finance. This 2024 edition, which took place in New York on May 6, was no exception. But it would be a shame to miss the exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”, which opens on May 10 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), because it aims to show the garment as we have never seen it in the museum: alive.
The visitor’s journey has been designed as a series of alcoves where one listens, breathes, feels, observes outfits; nature serves as a common thread, as a metaphor for the fragility, the ephemeral and cyclical nature of fashion. Damaged dresses, sometimes centuries old, face much more modern creations. We come across a floral jacket from 1615, a Christian Dior dress embroidered with petals, a draped piece by Iris van Herpen which evokes the wings of a butterfly, or a Philip Treacy headdress in the shape of an upside-down rose. Technology and the work of researchers each time allow us to better understand clothing. Andrew Bolton, curator of the exhibition and curator of the Costume Institute, the fashion department of the Met, explains this ambitious project.
How did you define the theme of the exhibition?
The idea came to me during the exhibition on Karl Lagerfeld [présentée au Met au printemps 2023] : a little girl of 6 or 7 years old asked a caretaker what would happen if she touched a fur coat that said “do not touch”. In response, he brought his hand closer to the garment and a shrill alarm began to wail. It made me think: the rules that govern a museum are very frustrating, for the little girl, for the adults, and for me too. When a piece of clothing enters a museum’s collection, its status completely changes, it becomes an art object that can no longer be touched or handled. It is displayed behind a window, in the dark. The only sense left to appreciate it is sight.
And is it insufficient?
The garment is designed to be worn in three dimensions, to be seen in movement, to be heard, to be felt. Apart from taste, it requires an engagement of all the senses, unlike painting or music. The starting point of this exhibition was to reduce the gap between the museum’s rules which limit its appreciation to sight, and the need to appeal to the other senses.
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