by This week’s opening of “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute couldn’t be further from a sleepy fairy tale.
Visitors will pass through a series of 29 rooms, where 16 “Sleeping Beauties” — garments too fragile to hang on mantels — are buried in glass. While many of the 220 garments, accessories and buttons are dazzlers, the whole experience is an assault on the senses and new terrain for an exhibition – and that’s exactly what it is – – fashion or otherwise. Beyond the naked eye, ticket holders will test their senses. There are four galleries infused with molecular recordings of smells, four galleries that amplify sound recordings, four galleries with CGI and/or digital avatars, three galleries with poetry readings, two galleries that encourage “forbidden museum behavior” – touching objects – and a finale a gallery featuring ChatGPT-powered interactivity created by Open AI.
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Although the earliest known version of the “Sleeping Beauty” story is traced back to 1330, The Met’s multi-sensory and digitally enhanced show is very much about the future. During a preview on Sunday evening, Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, said, “For me, this is just the beginning of my curatorial practice. I like the idea of going forward with this sensory and emotional approach to fashion,” adding that the creation of a sound and scent database for select items would be part of that equation.
The premise of “Sleeping Beauties” is to reawaken costumes from the Costume Institute’s 33,000-piece collection “through the senses so you can smell them, touch them, hear them and of course see them,” Bolton said. While playing the part, visitors can run their hands over the “touch wall,” a 3D-printed plastic version of the embroidered pattern for Raf Simon for Dior’s 2013 “Miss Dior” dress. They can feel the 3D replica pattern of the Dior 2014 “Mini Miss Dior” dress up close, as well as see a real version in vivid colors below the bell.
The prismatic effect is visible throughout the show, including at the entrance to the exhibition, where Brancusi’s 1910 bronze “Sleeping Muse” is located. That scene was the inspiration for the mannequin wearing the final look of the show – a Callot Soeurs wedding ensemble from 1930. Set atop an all-white amphitheater, the dress comes to life in other ways too. With a quick QR scan, visitors can use ChatGPT to interact with the dress’ former owner – Jazz Age socialite Natalie Potter. Adding another element is what Bolton described as a “honeymoon fan,” an 1869 cottonwood handheld fan inscribed like a diary by a 19-year-old bride, detailing the three weeks after her wedding.
From the beginning, the ancient versus the future is clear. Take Charles Frederick Worth’s “Cloud” dress, an 1887 ball gown of silk satin and chiffon with “close-loss,” which is caused by the decay of horizontal threads. Rather than hiding those imperfections, the lighting on the garment directs the eye to that “inherent weakness, which causes decay,” Bolton said. On the contrary there is a re-imagined version of the ball gown on a dancing form like “Pepper’s Ghost”, a decadent technique in which the image of an off-stage object is projected so that it appears to be in front of the audience. It took more than six months and 40 different renderings to create that digital version. (Appropriately, it’s accompanied by a musical score of Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty.” A “reawakening,” so to speak, of the Worth dress is steps away—a Gucci necklace for fall designed by Alessandro Michele 2017.
The technological effects make the past more accessible in many ways, from the slides sticking out on a wall to the more complex AI and CGI, Bolton said. “What people sometimes don’t realize is that when a garment comes into a museum, it can no longer be touched, smelled, heard or worn, so you have to rely on sight. Since fashion is a living art form, it depends on the body to activate it. Fashion almost wants to be touched. It represents so many senses unlike a painting, which is placed on a wall and seen directly.”
The nature-heavy theme courses throughout the exhibition, which opens to the public on Wednesday and runs through September 2. The multi-sensory combinations of different sizes in the galleries are meant to be case studies of Painted Flowers, Blurred Blossoms. , Dior Garden, Van Gogh Flowers, Poppies, Garthwaite Garden, The Red Rose, Specter of the Rose, Scent of Man, Scent of Woman, Resada Luteola, The Garden, Life in the Garden, Insects, Beetle Wings, Butterflies, The Birds, The Nightingale and the Rose, Sea Life, Venus, Persistent Shells, The Siren, Serpents, The Mermaid, and The Mermaid Bride.
Some of the more unexpected elements, especially the digital ones, were created by the show’s creative consultant and Showstudio’s Nick Knight, who created AI and CGI images, including a projection of a dying rose. that finished. Sometimes, smell is the main attraction, as in The Specter of the Rose, which draws on the idea that perfume often remains embedded in a garment. Smell researcher and artist Sissel Tolaas transferred fragrance using peak molecules from three dresses — including Paul Poiret’s 1913 “La Rose d’Iribe” dress — to scented paint applied to three sections of a nearby wall that visitors can rub to smell every scent. . In another area, the intricate embroidery on a 1615-1620 waistcoat is reimagined in an interactive embossed wallpaper made to Braille specifications.
A symphony of scents can be wafted in Scent of a Woman, which showcases numerous floral hats and the fall 1938 House of Schiaparelli blue silk crepe evening dress that belonged to Millicent Rogers. Met-goers can use the nearby plastic tubes to smell six peak molecules from the dress of the Standard Oil heiress. “You smell like millicent Rogers,” Bolton said. “You smell not only the perfume she wore, but her natural body odor, what she ate, what she drank, what she smoked and where she lived.” Tolaas has achieved all those scents.
There is a mention of mortality in the Poppies area, where actor Morgan Specter can be heard reading John McRae’s 1915 poem “In Flanders Field, featuring the First World War soldiers who died on the Western Front. Ana de Pombe’s 1937 evening dress has a poppy print that shows a drop of blood. Nearby, a spring 2015 Viktor & Rolf haute couture ensemble inspired by a laser-cut poppy with a straw headpiece and carbon fiber rods is on display.
Fear also comes into the picture, especially in The Birds gallery, which features two Alexander McQueen orange jackets, including a spring 1995 screen-printed one by Simon Ungless and Andrew Groves, and hand-painted swallows featured in Madeleine Vionnet’s 1938 evening dress. with a pattern of swallows. It is the large-scale film projection of a flock of swallows that fills the sky more and draws the eye. An updated version of flapping bird wings can be heard from the soundtrack from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller “The Birds”. Snakes could also inspire some of the attendees since Iris van Herpen’s 2011 “Snake” dress is set against a Knight-made visual of slithering snakes.
Van Gogh’s Flowers are irresistible to showcase Yves Saint Laurent’s “Irises” jacket, which was inspired by the Impressionist’s 1889 painting of the same name. Above, a spinning projection zooms in on the boldness and intricacies of the garment’s embroidery. The workers at Maison Lesage needed 600 hours of manual work, 200,000 beads and 150,000 pallets in 22 colors to complete the garment.
“Sleeping Beauties” also has green displays of great talent, including one of Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson’s grass spray coats, which is still growing in a glass case. Before it was installed, the Costume Institute staff cared for the seed-embedded coat in a watered grow tent. A video that has passed on that device serves as the background. But after a week of appearing, the garment must be exchanged for a dried version of one for the duration of the show.
Anderson and TikTok chief executive Shou Chew will serve as honorary chairs at Monday night’s Met Gala. TikTok is the main sponsor of the exhibition, with support from Loewe and additional support from Conde Nast. When asked about the TikTok factor, when the United States banned the social media platform, Bolton said, “When we approached TikTok, it was so exciting for us because it is a huge platform. Of course, it’s all about technology. Our shows are expected to reach a huge audience. That was and still is very exciting for us.”
Asked about any concerns about pushback for that option, Bolton said, “We’ll have to see how things develop [with the issue of a U.S. ban.”
Nature is meant to be seen as “the ultimate metaphor for fashion,” and one that relays a message of rebirth and renewal, Bolton said, “We also wanted to use this as an opportunity to engage with designers, who are involved more deeply in ethical, sustainable practices and acquire pieces from them.”
Other environmentally enterprising creations are Conner Ives’ “Couture Girl” dress from the designer’s 2020 graduate collection entitled “the American Dream.” The bulbous creation was made from dead-stock fabric donated by Carolina Herrera’s creative director Wes Gordon and was made with paillettes made from recycled PET by the Sustainable Sequin Co. Ives hand embroidered 10,000-plus sequins basing the shapes on his four favorite flowers. In “The Mermaid” area of the show, there is Phillip Lim’s 2021 “Algae Sequin” dress, which is made of biodegradable rayon mesh derived from bamboo and seaweed. Sustainability and the ethics of fashion should be seen as part of fashion and not designated in a special section, nor be unjustly criticized for its aesthetic, Bolton said.
In the “Seashells” area, visitors will not only see Alexander McQueen’s spring 2001 dress made from razor clamshells but they will hear what it sounds like in motion. A recording was made in an anechoic chamber. There are also other sea-worthy creations so to speak, like an Iris van Herpen’s 3D printed haute couture ensemble with spiraling shell forms, as well as a row of shell-shaped handbags by Judith Leiber.
Considering the breadth of “Sleeping Beauties” and the depth of details, it’s not surprising that the show’s layout was designed to look like a molecular formula if seen from above. Given the technology and fashion combination, Bolton said, “In a way, it’s like marrying the poetics of fashion with the poetics of science.”
The Met Previews “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”
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Launch Gallery: The Met Previews “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”
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