One of the most fragile gowns in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s show cannot stand up. A circa-1887 piece by Charles Frederick Worth, once owned by an Astor, lies flat in its case, its satin filaments abrading away in feathery streaks. Curator Andrew Bolton decided the risk of handling it was worth taking. His team needed to find out what the dress looked like in its prime, and that research became the seed of the Costume Institute’s spring 2024 show, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”. It ran from May 10 to September 2.
The title points to garments so delicate they can barely be handled, let alone hung on a mannequin. Most suffer from what conservators call inherent vice: their materials or construction guarantee slow, irreversible decay. Time Out noted that the Costume Institute looks after a collection of 33,000 garments, and some of them cannot go on a mannequin at all. The Guardian counted 250 garments and accessories on show, reaching back four centuries, plus 75 new acquisitions made for the exhibition.
Giving silent clothes a voice
The brief, in the words of Met director Max Hollein, was to undo what a museum does to clothing. “When a work of fashion enters into the Met’s collection, it becomes an object,” he said. “You can no longer touch it, you can no longer feel it, not in the way the original creator intended.”
So the show leaned on technology. Beside the Worth gown, an animated 3D figure danced in a version of the same dress. In another gallery, the sound of silk taffeta, known as scroop, played next to a display of grand gowns, and seashell paillettes clanked beside an Alexander McQueen sheath. Visitors could rub a wall to release an aroma, as if it were skin. According to Time Out, the team from Sissel Tolaas Studio extracted scent molecules from the fabrics, trapped the air and moisture with a microfilter, then analysed what they found. A room for the socialite Millicent Rogers carried a fragrance built from molecules on her hats and dresses, mixed with recreated fragments of her body odour, shaped by what she ate, drank and smoked.
Not everything was out of reach. A 3D-printed replica of Christian Dior’s Miss Dior dress let visitors feel the shape of its flowers.
A chatbot in a wedding dress
The boldest piece sat in the final gallery. Natalie Potter, a New York socialite, married financier William Conkling Ladd on December 4, 1930, and her wedding photograph ran in Harper’s Bazaar. The Met worked with OpenAI to build a chat interface for her gown. “The Met team provided us with a lot of source documents, facts, and materials about Natalie, her life, and her dress,” OpenAI technician Isa Fulford said. Visitors could text “Natalie” and get specific answers about her wedding, her outfit and her life.
Bolton explained why. “I wanted to have an example of a garment that is actively responding to your engagement with it,” he said. “Something I find a little bit frustrating in any show is how passive the objects are.”
Nature tied the rooms together. The Guardian’s reviewer found the overlap between the sensory theme and the natural one confusing at times, though the craftsmanship held it together. One exhibit made the point literally: a navy wool coat by Jonathan Anderson of Loewe, a sponsor of the show, carried real oat, rye and wheatgrass that was alive on opening day and set to wilt over the run, with a time-lapse video of the full cycle beside it.
Sources
- Met exhibition review: 2024's spring show is a feast for the senses – The Guardian
- The Met Museum's new 'Sleeping Beauties' fashion exhibit is a wonderland for the senses – Time Out New York
- With Help From Animation, AI, and an Olfactory Artist, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" Is Bringing Rarely Seen Pieces to Life – Vogue
