New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the dress code for this year’s Met Gala will be Fashion is Art.
Joining the top co-chairs — Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Vogue’s Anna Wintour — is a “host committee” chaired by designer Anthony Vaccarello and filmmaker Zoë Kravitz, and featuring names from Sabrina Carpenter and Teyana Taylor to Lena Dunham and Misty Copeland.
Additions include actor Angela Bassett and athlete Aimee Mullins.
Nicole Kidman to co-chair Met Gala with Beyoncé and Venus Williams
The dress code seems to have been chosen for maximum flexibility.
“Hopefully, it will put an end to the rather obsolete ‘Is Fashion Art?’ debate once and for all,” Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, said.
The big party is not only a fundraiser for the institute — a self-funding department — but also a launch pad for the annual spring fashion exhibit.
Curated by Mr Bolton and his team, this year’s show, Costume Art, seeks to present fashion as a through-line in the entire history of art.
The exhibit will be the biggest, in terms of objects, that the institute’s ever done: nearly 400 in total, or 200 garments and 200 artworks from around the museum, placed in pairs.
“It’s a beast,” Mr Bolton said.
The idea, he noted, is to examine “the dressed body” in all its aspects, and to make the point that not only is fashion art — something previous shows have shown — but that art is fashion.
“It’s reversing what we’ve done before,” Mr Bolton said.
“Now we’re looking at art through the lens of fashion.”
What that means, in practice, is that you might see an art object in a glass case — say, a vase from ancient Greece.
Displayed above the case will be a garment from the museum’s vast costume collection, echoing the fashion on figures in that vase.
AP