Bea Szenfeld, “Ammonite”, spring/summer 2014, White paper, white polyester thread, and white plastic pearls
“Undercover” (Japanese, founded 1990) Jun Takahashi, Dress, spring/summer 2024, White silk satin trimmed with pink rayon plain-weave roses and pink synthetic pleated organza and overlaid with white nylon tulle embroidered with black plastic sequins and crystal, bugle, and seed beads in the forms of spiders and trimmed with white silk satin
Gucci, Alessandro Michele, Cape, autumn/winter 2017-18, Seafoam silk satin embroidered with polychrome plastic sequins, plastic pearls, clear glass crystals, black glass bugle beads, and bronze glass seed beads in the pattern of a dove, a cloud and flowers
Pictured above are just a few of the many stunning works on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. In addition to the over 200 garments and accessories, the museum has added an additional sensory experience that includes scents that influenced the designers of certain time periods.
Curator Andrew Bolton discusses the show with Artnet here.
From the museum-
When an item of clothing enters The Costume Institute’s collection, its status is irrevocably changed. What was once a vital part of a person’s lived experience becomes a lifeless work of art that can no longer be worn, heard, touched, or smelled. Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion endeavors to resuscitate garments from the collection by reactivating their sensory qualities and reengaging
our sensorial perceptions. With its cross-sensory offerings, the exhibition aims to extend the interpretation of fashion within museums from the merely visual to the multisensory and participatory, encouraging personal connections.
The galleries unfold as a series of case studies united by the theme of nature. Motifs such as flowers and foliage, birds and insects, and fish and shells are organized into three groupings: earth, air, and water, respectively. In many ways, nature serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion—its rebirth, renewal, and cyclicity as well as its transience, ephemerality, and evanescence. The latter qualities are evident in the “sleeping beauties,” garments that are self- destructing due to inherent weaknesses and the inevitable passage of time, which ground several of the case studies.
Sleep is an essential salve for a garment’s well-being and survival, but as in life, it requires a suspension of the senses that equivocates between life and death. The exhibition is a reminder that the featured fashions— despite being destined for an eternal slumber safely within the museum’s walls—do not forget their sensory histories. Indeed, these histories are embedded within the very fibers of their being, and simply require reactivation through the mind and body, heart and soul of those willing to dream and imagine.
Mary Katranzou’s “Digitalis” evening dress, spring/summer 2018, White synthetic faille digitally printed with lilies, daisies, dahlias, peonies, petunias, amaryllises, chrysanthemums, and foxgloves, embroidered with polychrome sequins, seed beads, bugle beads, and cannetille, and pieced with white neoprene trimmed with gray scuba knit and digitally printed with black lilies, daisies, dahlias, peonies, petunias, amaryllises, and chrysanthemums
About the dress above from the museum-
Mary Katrantzou‘s evening dress combines several elements of the three painted silk gowns opposite. Stylistically, the bold scale, color palette, and arrangement of the floral motifs resemble the 1740s robe à la frangaise, while the techniques of outlining the pattern in black and embroidering the flowers and leaves with beads recall the 1780g robe à l’anglaise and the 1870s Mme Martin Decalf gown, respectively. Katrantzou’s design inspiration, however, is decidedly contemporary: the children’s activity paint by number, which involves filling in numbered sections of a picture outlined in black with corresponding colored pigments.
Conner Ives, “Couture Girl” dress, autumn/winter 2021-22, White deadstock silk organza embroidered with polychrome deadstock plastic seed beads and polychrome recycled polyethylene terephthalate sequins of daisies, peonies, dahlias, and sunflowers
About the dress above-
Nature and artifice coalesce in Conner Ives’s “Couture Girl” dress from the designer’s 2020 graduate collection “The American Dream,” which was inspired by the women with whom he grew up in Bedford, New York. The garment’s bulblike shape parodies the pneumatic silhouettes of mid-twentieth-century fashion. The dress took five months to complete and is a testament to Ives’s commitment to sustainable practices: the silk organza is deadstock fabric donated by Carolina Herrera’s creative director, Wes Gordon, and the paillettes – made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – were designed and produced in collaboration with Rachel Olowes of the Sustainable Sequin Company. Ives embroidered the more than ten thousand sequins by hand, basing the six shapes on his four favorite flowers – daisies, peonies, dahlias, and sunflowers.
The museum also included these rose-inspired garments.
Dolce & Gabbana, Domenico Dolce, Stefano Gabbana, Dress, 2024 Alta Moda, Red silk satin
Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Jacket, autumn/winter 2022-23 haute couture, Red silk taffeta appliqued with self-fabric roses
This exhibition closes 9/2/24.