until Monday September 02 2024

The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 899
T : +1 21 25 35 77 10
1000 Fifth Avenue
NY 10028 New York
United States

Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion will make use of first-hand research, conservation analysis, and diverse technologies, from cutting-edge tools, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and computer-generated imagery to traditional formats of x-rays, video animation, light projection, and soundscapes, to reactivate the sensory capacities of masterworks in the Museum’s collection. Approximately 250 garments and accessories spanning four centuries will be on view, visually united by iconography related to nature, which will serve as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors will discover a sequence of self-contained galleries, each exploring a different theme inspired by the natural world. Within each space, historical fashions will be juxtaposed with their contemporary counterparts in an immersive environment intended to engage a visitor’s sense of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. The walls of one space will be embossed with the foliate, vegetal, and insectoid embroidery of an Elizabethan bodice; the floors of another will be animated with snakes that frame the neckline of an early 20th-century sequined dress; and the ceiling of another will be projection-mapped with a Hitchcockian swarm of blackbirds that encircle a black tulle evening dress designed by Madeleine Vionnet just before the outbreak of World War II. Punctuating the exhibition will be a series of “sleeping beauties”, garments that can no longer be dressed on mannequins due to their extreme fragility, that will be displayed in glass “coffins” allowing visitors to analyze their various states of deterioration as if under a microscope. Select “beauties” will be brought back to life by the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost.

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