The celebration to mark the exhibition’s debut will take held in Manhattan on May 6 of the following year.
The theme for the Costume Institute’s 2024 exhibition and gala, the biggest party of the fashion world, was revealed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Wednesday. It is called “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” Each year, Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, carefully curates a roster of A-list celebrities from the domains of fashion, cinema, politics, and sports for the Met Gala.
The celebration will mark the inauguration of the show, which the public can view from May 10 through September 2, and will take place in Manhattan on May 6 of the following year. TikTok, a popular app for sharing videos, is a co-sponsor of both. About 250 clothing and accessories from the Costume Institute’s enormous collections of 33,000 pieces, ranging from a 17th-century embroidered jacket to an Alexander McQueen spring-summer 2001 gown made of shells, will be on display in this expansive and immersive show.
“Using the natural world as a uniting visual metaphor for the transience of fashion, the show will explore cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal, breathing new life into these storied objects,” the Met stated. Andrew Bolton, curator at the Costume Institute, clarified that objects are ineligible for display when they are added to the collection. Thus, the movement is invisible to you. It is imperceptible to the senses—you cannot touch, hear, or smell it.”
He declared that his goal for the show is to “reawaken the sort of sensorial capacities within fashions in the Costume Institute, through various technologies.” A full silk satin House of Worth ball gown from the late 19th century, its embroidery, beads, and sequins remaining brilliant despite the years, was fanned out on a big table in a chamber that looked like a laboratory.
The dress from 1887 is currently too brittle and broken to be put on a mannequin. It will therefore be exhibited flatly while simultaneously being brought back to its former splendor by computer imaging and the deployment of a hologram, an homage to the immersive exhibitions that are currently quite popular. According to Bolton, the museum decided to collaborate with TikTok, a Chinese-owned company, because of the platform’s “accessibility.”
He was questioned if he was afraid of blowback for selecting TikTok given its purported ties to China’s ruling Communist Party. “We really wanted to have the biggest, broadest sort of platform possible in terms of how the show is actually disseminated more globally,” he replied. The Costume Institute’s main funding source is the Met Gala. In the 1990s, Wintour took over the charity gala and made it into one of the most talked-about events in the world.
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