On a sunny Tuesday evening, the second day of couture week in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Friends of The Costume Institute brought out fashion and art’s biggest fans for a cocktail party. Hosted by Andrew Bolton (Curator in Charge, The Costume Institute), Vogue’s own Mark Guiducci (and one of the co-chairs of the Friends of The Costume Institute), and Hassan Pierre (a member of the Friends group), it was the ultimate meeting place for conversations about fashion as art and vice versa. Since the haute couture shows are all about craft and preserving rare techniques, it was a match made in heaven, and there was ample material for endless conversations.
Inside Pierre’s home, friends, couture fans, and members of The Met’s Friends group sipped cocktails and discussed everything from the current lineup of shows to what they were most excited to see while in Paris. It was a fitting event for The Friends of The Costume Institute, which frequently hosts chic cocktails and fun gatherings. The Friends of The Costume Institute is a group of patrons who provide support to the Museum and the Costume Institute, in order to help the department acquire its stunning and fascinating objects for the overall collection and future exhibitions. The collection currently contains over 33,000 objects from the fifteenth century to the present–and often serves as the basis for the topical Costume Institute exhibitions.
With couture week as a backdrop, it’s impossible not to think about the pieces coming down the runway in the context of them becoming future museum pieces—with all that workmanship, it’s impossible not to. Timed to the Met Gala earlier this spring, The Costume Institute opened its spring exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, full of pieces taken from The Costume Institute’s permanent collection. As guests sipped cocktails under the Paris sun that never seems to set in the summer evenings, it proved there’s never been a better time to think about the preservation of the art of fashion.