The theme of this year’s Met Gala, linked to the exhibition “Costume as Art” and translated into the dress code “Fashion is Art,” opened up a great deal of interpretive freedom. As curator Andrew Bolton explained, the central idea of the exhibition revolved around the relationship between dress and the body: the body as canvas, fashion as an artistic gesture in constant flux.
In the exhibition itinerary, for example, an iconically padded garment by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons is placed next to a photograph by German artist Hans Bellmer that features a similarly voluminous form. A classical Greek sculpture, meanwhile, is set against a Fortuny dress from the 1920s, which echoes its color and workmanship, recalling a work from the late fifth century B.C. As for the guests’ looks, we saw several artistic reinterpretations: some more faithful and some less so.
[đź“· Getty Images; Snapix; IPA; erinhanson.com; commons.wikimedia.org; metmuseum.org; tomoffinland.org: sothebys.com; npg.si.edu]
