The Gala, which is a benefit for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, marks the opening of the annual fashion exhibit.
Titled Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, this year’s exhibit unveils rare treasures from the Costume Institute’s permanent collection, some of which are so delicate that they will be showcased solely through animation and projections.
“When an item of clothing enters the Costume Institute collection, its status is changed forever. What was once a vital part of a person’s life is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled,” explains the Met’s exhibition overview.
“This exhibition reanimates these objects, helping us experience them as they were originally intended—with vibrancy, dynamism, and life.”
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Around 250 garments and accessories spanning four centuries will be on view. “The exhibition will breathe new life into these storied objects through creative and immersive activations designed to convey the smells, sounds, textures, and motions of garments that can no longer directly interact with the body,” the Met says.
The items will be visually united by iconography related to nature, “which will serve as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion and a vehicle to examine the cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal”.
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion
May 10 – September 2, 2024
The Met Fifth Avenue
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