Can a mannequin serve body?
New Met Gala theme just dropped…
It’s Steff here, finally tapping into the i-D Substack after months of fabulous writing from my colleagues. There’s only one thing that can re-awaken the Vogue Girl in me and drag me back to blogging: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute exhibit.
Back in my One World Trade Center days, I was deep in the Costume Institute beat—an assignment that, as a 1) nerd and as a 2) fashion obsessive, I am very grateful to have had. So I sprung awake at 6:30 a.m. yesterday, zipped into my most Upper East Side-appropriate outfit—the best I can do is hot pink Comme des Garçons florals—and trekked up to the press announcement and preview at The Met to find out what Andrew Bolton had in store.
Being sneaky, I already had a hunch that this show would be about the female body. Bolton mentioned last year that he’d met with Michaela Stark, the London-based designer whose corsets free the female body from traditional silhouettes. Being even sneakier, I did my signature move, which is to arrive at any event super early and ask to use the bathroom. I had to woo 2 different security guards to let me into the closed museum’s galleries where the restrooms are located, and finally was given free reign to safari over to the bathrooms hidden just off the Medieval wing. On the way, I crashed into Brenda and Isaac, who told me that Thom Browne and Michael Kors were also waiting for the loo. (See? You can get really great interviews and even better intel if you always have to pee.)
So I jetted to the women’s and then smacked right into Andrew Bolton himself—the best-dressed, kindest, and most generous curator in NYC. Andrew was fetching Thom Browne, and then offered to take us through the back route to the exhibition display—not slated to open for 20 more minutes. We compared Thanksgiving plans (both staying home and indulging with our dogs) and admired the wallpaper in some of the museum’s more hidden decorative-art galleries. (“We have a house with wallpaper like this,” said Thom as I fawned over the schmancy decor.)
Then I found myself in the empty room with the displays revealing the Met’s new exhibition theme: Costume Art.
“Costume Art” at the Costume Institute? Stop the presses!
Sounds simple, sure, but the show—opening May 10 in the Costume Institute’s new Condé M. Nast galleries (underwritten, you guessed it, by Condé Nast, Thom Browne, Tory Burch, Michael Kors, and others)—will explore the human body’s relationship to clothing. As Bolton put it in his speech, “There’s not a single gallery in the museum in which the dressed body is not represented, making fashion the connecting thread across the 600,00 square feet of galleries inside the museum.”
Spanning over 5,000 years of art and objects, the show traces the relationship between fashion and the body, drawing parallels between Grecian draping and Fortuny (one display at the announcement), Hans Bellmer’s twisted dolls and Comme des Garçons (another display), and fashion as both life and death (think Japanese Meiji woodcuts of skeletons x Riccardo Tisci’s bony Givenchy couture). The themes will be segmented into: the “Naked Body,” the “Classical Body,” the “Pregnant Body,” the “Ageing Body,” the “Anatomical Body,” and the “Mortal Body.”
Classical and Anatomical are categories to be expected, but it’s very cool to see “Naked” and “Pregnant” alongside “Ageing.” Georgina Godfrey’s “Pregnancy Dress” was also on display—and is often credited as the unsung inspo for Rei Kawakubo’s “Lumps and Bumps.” I am hopeful that the show will not only tackle the plastic surgery discourse—can anyone even AGE ANYMORE?!—but that it also taps into the body modifications so popular in 2020s culture. (Possibly the first time a BBL could be on display in the Met—though not the first time one walked its halls.)
But I know what you’re thinking… can a male curator honestly represent the nuance, delicacy, and radical spirit of the female form in a show sponsored by Jeff and Lauren Bezos at a traditionally über-Western institution? It’s been reported that the Costume Institute would work with feminist scholars and curators for the show, and that body-positive activists would be consulted. That wasn’t mentioned at the launch announcement this morning—nor were the mannequins, which sound, actually, quite revolutionary. According to Nicole Phelps’ report in Vogue, “the museum will also be casting real bodies to embody the clothes.” She doesn’t elaborate, but I’m taking that to mean: not all size-00 mannequins that will be based on real women’s forms.
We have six months to see whether the female body-ody-ody is presented in all its glory on Fifth and 82nd.
Walter Van Bierendonck’s totally naked top and leggings were on display at the announcement. They are 1000000% the inspiration for Duran Lantink’s dick leggings at Jean Paul Gaultier. A perfect rebuttal for everyone with their panties in a bunch about nudity on the runway. GET REAL, people. Being naked is canon.
I hope to see works from more non-white designers in the show—and that the Superfine: Tailoring Black Style show wasn’t a one-off. This display featured two POC designers—Rei Kawakubo and Brazilian Renata Buzzo—which trends positive. I’d like to see Simone Rocha, Martine Rose, Rui Zhou, and Raul Lopez included for sure.
A body-centric exhibition inside the Museum means we’re destined to see lots of BODY on the Met Gala steps. Saint Laurent is an exhibition sponsor, so I’d bet that Hailey, Charli, Rosé, and Zoe will all be there showing skin. What I actually need to happen, though, is for Adam Selman to get his new Victoria’s Secret on some guests… Paloma Elsesser and Alex Consani, please? He invented the naked dress, I better see him on the red carpet or I will be protesting.
Let’s place bets on the performer. It’s usually somewhat thematic. Sabrina Carpenter in Swarovski crystals? A big Chappell Roan moment? Beyoncé finally performs “Freakum Dress?” LMK what you think.
And now I will take my ex-Vogue hat off and leave you with some silly things I heard at Fashion Week in October. I meant to publish these as a standalone story—oh, 4 weeks ago—but first I got COVID, then I got married, and you know… time goes by!
“Why are you straight, why are you here, and why are you telling me about fashion?”
“She tried to make me go to Korea… without an assistant!”
“He bought like 3 mini Kellys in China the other week.”
“I’m actually really averse to non-glamorous things.”
“The true merit of being rich is not giving a shit.”
“Are you more blue square or green square?”
I’ll see you again soon when I report from the British Fashion Awards. ’Til then, I leave you in the capable hands of Nicolaia, Doug, and Alex.