The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute recently introduced their spring ’24 exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” on view from May 10 through Sept. 2, 2024, with a morning press conference and a glamorous evening Gala benefit, the latter of which is the department’s primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, operations, and capital improvements.
The Met Gala Benefit was a $75,000 ticket. The dress code was “The Garden of Times.” This year’s co-chairs were Jennifer Lopez (who looked lovely in silver), Anna Wintour, Chris Hemsworth (Sleeping Beauty’s prince), Bad Bunny, and Zedaya. Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, and Jonathan Anderson, creative director of LOEWE, served as honorary chairs. It was party time, and all the stars were out, looking glamorous!
When I arrived at the Met for the press conference, security was tight yet very polite. Across the street from the Met, there was a huge press presence (photographers, TV networks, social media, newspapers, magazines, influencers, and just ordinary people). Folks waited patiently, standing, sitting on the curb and in their own chairs, for hours to get a glimpse of celebrities posing in their gorgeous designer fashions.
Renee Minus White/A Time To Style photos
The “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition features approximately 250 garments and accessories that are connected visually through nature. The fashions are opulent and well restored.
On entering the exhibition, a sequence of self-contained galleries is organized in three sections, focused on earth, air, and water. One gallery, arranged as a garden, includes a glass greenhouse displaying hats blooming with a variety of flowers and surrounded by subtle “smell-scapes” that challenge olfactory expectations.
The show takes advantage of life’s sensory capacities. Throughout the exhibit, there are aromatic histories of hats bearing floral motifs; walls of galleries are embossed with the embroidery of select garments; soft voices read poetry and stories, and birds chirp.
The illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost shows how the “hobble skirt” restricted women’s stride in the early 20th century, exemplified by an evening dress with a hobble skirt by Jeanne Hallée from 1913–14. The ghost illusion shows a woman in the design slowly evolving into an insect.
Popularized by couturier Paul Poiret, the hobble skirt was critiqued by French caricaturist Georges Goursat, who likened its wearers to distorted insects due to their hunched posture and limited stride. Tight around the knees, the garment featured an elongated silhouette with a high, small bust and long draped skirt that narrowed to a point at the hem, forcing its wearer to walk with a clipped, mincing gait, or hobble.
Hallée’s design epitomizes the segmented shape parodied by Goursat, featuring a gilded abdomen extending into a flared peplum over the hips.
According to Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, “When an item of clothing enters our collection, its status is changed irrevocably. What was once a vital part of a person’s lived experience is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled.”
While preparing for the exhibit, some of the clothes, accessories, and other garments from various periods needed mending by sewing artisans. Some galleries feature actual “sleeping beauties”: gowns lying flat on the floors in vignettes—so fragile, they can no longer be used to dress mannequins.
“The Met’s innovative spring 2024 Costume Institute exhibition pushes the boundaries of your imagination and invites you to experience the multisensory facets of a garment, many of which get lost when entering a museum collection as an object,” said Max Hollein, the Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO. “‘Sleeping Beauties’ will heighten our engagement with these masterpieces of fashion by evoking how they feel, move, sound, smell, and interact when being worn, ultimately offering a deeper appreciation of the integrity, beauty, and artistic brilliance of the works on display.”
The exhibit includes creations by designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hattie Carnegie, Lilly Daché, Hubert de Givenchy, Deirdre Hawken, Stephen Jones, Guy Laroche, Madame Pauline, Mainbocher, Elsa Schiaparelli, Sally Victor, and others.
A coat by Jonathan Anderson for LOEWE has been planted with oat, rye, and wheat grass that will start out alive and gradually die during the exhibition.
Two examples of Charles James’s “Butterfly” ball gown—one in pristine condition, the other a “sleeping beauty” with extensive damage—demonstrate a rare instance of duplicates in the collection.
TikTok sponsors this exhibit. LOEWE and Conde Naste provide additional support. For more info, visit www.metmuseum.org.