The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the spring exhibition, which will be the sequel of In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, which opened September 18.
In America: An Anthology of Fashion exhibition will be inaugurated with the 2022 Met Gala, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit normally held the first Monday in May. In America: An Anthology of Fashion will examine the genesis of American style, focusing on the work of designers and dressmakers in the US from the 19th to mid-late 20th century. “In America: An Anthology of Fashion traces the emergence of a distinct American style, underlying stories that often go unrecognized," said Max Hollein, the Marina Kellen French director of The Metrevealing. "As a whole, this ambitious two-part exhibition ignites timely conversations about the tremendous cultural contributions of designers working in the United States and the very definition of an American aesthetic.” The exhibition will feature approximately 100 examples of men’s and women’s garments that reveal unfinished stories about American fashion: from political, the stylistic and cultural to personal and ideological.
Among the exhibitors will be eight film directors, each creating fictional cinematic vignettes, or “freeze frames,” within each room, imparting new perspectives on American fashion and highlighting the directors’ singular aesthetics. Together, these dynamic and interconnected elements will offer a nuanced portrait of American fashion and the individuals who defined it during this pivotal period. Directors contributing to the exhibition include the likes of Sofia Coppola, Julie Dash, Tom Ford, Regina King, Martin Scorsese, and Chloé Zhao.
Six “case studies” will be incorporated into the American Wing galleries, offering an in-depth look at historical garments that distill key moments in the development of American fashion. Examples include two coats that complicate the legacy of Brooks Brothers, including a livery dating from 1857–65 and worn by an unidentified enslaved man, and a dress from about 1865 by New Orleans–based dressmaker Madame Olympe, the earliest American piece in The Costume Institute’s collection with a label identifying its creator.
The exhibition will run until September 5, 2022, concurrently with the first part In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, part of its 75th anniversary, on view in the Anna Wintour Costume Center. Nearly half of the pieces currently on display will be rotated out in order to include garments by designers not yet featured as well as by designers whose work appeared in the first rotation. These additions will reflect the vitality and diversity of contemporary American fashion.
“Part Two, which explores the foundations of American fashion in relation to the complex histories of the American Wing period rooms, serves as a preface to the concise dictionary of American fashion presented in Part One, said Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. "Whereas Lexicon explores a new language of American fashion, Anthology uncovers unfamiliar sartorial narratives filtered through the imaginations of some of America’s most visionary film directors. It is through these largely hidden stories that a nuanced picture of American fashion comes into focus, one in which the sum of its parts are as significant as the whole."
Exhibitions:
In America: An Anthology of Fashion
May 7 – September 5, 2022
In America: A Lexicon of Fashion
September 18, 2021 – September 5, 2022
The Met Fifth Avenue
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