If you haven’t already visited the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition at the Costume Institute, now might be a good time. Soon, a new piece will join the 200-plus garment exhibition (on display until September 2, 2024), and it’s a special one. Anna Wintour’s custom 2024 Met Gala look designed by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe will be installed next to the 1889 cape by Charles Frederick Worth that inspired it.
“It was a privilege to work on this look for Anna for the Met Gala and to find the synergies between what we are doing presently at Loewe and the incredible craft of the sleeping beauties in the Costume Institute archives,” said Anderson. “It’s an honor to have one of my designs now live alongside Charles Frederick Worth’s cape in his Tulipes Hollandaises textile that inspired the piece.”
One of the major through lines of the exhibition is the reinterpretation of historical garments from the archives. Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, explained the importance of the modern-day pieces living alongside the historical ones. “‘Sleeping Beauties’ endeavors to reawaken garments in the Costume Institute’s collection by reactivating their sensory qualities,” Bolton said. “The show unfolds as a series of case studies united by the theme of nature. Like fashion, nature depends on the widest sensory engagements for its fullest sensorial expressions. The comparison, however, does not end with the senses. In many ways, nature serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion—its rebirth, renewal, and cyclicity, as well as its transience, ephemerality, and evanescence. The former qualities are reflected in the exhibition through the many garments that have been influenced by earlier styles.”
Other side-by-side comparisons include an Alessandro Michele Gucci cape with clouds and sunbursts and an 1880s ball gown by Charles Frederick Worth, Dries Van Noten’s ensembles influenced by Worth’s Tulipes Hollandaises evening cloak, and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s New Junon evening dress inspired by Monsieur Dior’s original Junon gown.
In the case of Anderson’s Loewe look for Wintour, Bolton explains, it was inspired by two pieces from the Costume Institute’s collection, both of which can be found in the “Sleeping Beauties” exhibition. “The dress was inspired by an 1880s dress by A. Fanet featuring a pattern of drooping poppies, and the tuxedo coat was inspired by an 1880s cloak by Charles Frederick Worth brocaded with tulips. Like other designers in the exhibition who have reawakened garments in our collection conceptually—through reinterpretation—Jonathan has imbued Worth’s cloak and Fanet’s dress with contemporary relevance that helps visitors connect with them both aesthetically and intellectually. Seeing Jonathan’s ensemble alongside these historical pieces creates a tonic effect with the past informing the present and the present enlivening the past.”
Visit the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until September 2, 2024.