“About Time: Fashion and Duration” will open at the Costume Institute of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this Thursday, October 29.
Even though this year’s Met Gala was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the spirit behind the famed event is not lost. Pretend it’s the first Monday in May by visiting the exhibit intended for this year’s gala. “About Time: Fashion and Duration” will open at the Costume Institute of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this Thursday, October 29.
The exhibit, created in honor of the Met Museum’s 150th anniversary, will chart the similarities in fashion throughout the last century and a half, from 1870 to the present. “Employing Henri Bergson’s concept of la durée (duration), it will explore how clothes generate temporal associations that conflate past, present, and future. Virginia Woolf will serve as the ‘ghost narrator’ of the exhibition,” noted the museum’s website.In keeping with the temporal theme, the exhibit will take place in two adjacent galleries, structured as enormous clock faces. Couplings of two similar garments will sit around the clock, illustrating the commonalities in fashion over time. The looks could resemble one another in “shape, motif, material, pattern, technique, or decoration,” though they might have been created in different centuries.
To further showcase the items’ similarities in structure and design, many of the exhibit’s garments will be black in color. The final piece in the show, however, is a stark “white dress from Viktor & Rolf’s spring/summer 2020 haute couture collection, made from upcycled swatches in a patchwork design, will serve as a symbol for the future of fashion with its emphasis on community, collaboration, and sustainability.”
The exhibit, made possible by Louis Vuitton, also includes pieces from the brand’s artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. A leather dress and French-inspired ensemble from the brand’s Spring/Summer 2018 collection appears in the show, as well as a 2011 piece from Ghesquière’s Vuitton predecessor, Marc Jacobs. According to the exhibit’s catalog, Ghesquière “was interested in using garments outside their rightful historical time, transforming them into integral parts of a contemporary wardrobe.”
Credits – Source -Pics – REUTERS/Mike Segar