The exhibition is called Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.
It's the largest exhibition that The Costume Institute has undertaken.
It's in two sites: The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.
The exhibition is about forging relationships between fashion and specific religious artworks
within The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition, in a way, has been planned almost like a procession.
When you enter The Met Fifth Avenue, you're almost immediately confronted with the start
of the exhibition, which begins in the Byzantine galleries.
The Byzantine galleries focus on designers who've been inspired by sacred spaces,
the interiors of Byzantine churches.
We have Gianni Versace's last collection, in 1997.
One of the dresses you see was directly inspired by a crucifix that belongs to
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It's a series of dresses that almost mirror chainmail, reflective of the micro mosaics
within Ravenna Cathedral.
They morph from evening gowns into the finale, a wedding dress with a crucifix embroidered onto it.
The Dolce and Gabbana collection was inspired by the mosaics at Monreale Cathedral.
The designers entirely embroidered them in paillettes, so the paillettes have this extraordinary
sort of shimmer, intended to reflect the tilework within Byzantine cathedrals.
There's a small section, the Byzantine Crypt, which also looks at Versace, who was inspired
by particular icons from Ravenna Cathedral.
When you move out of the Byzantine galleries into the Medieval Europe gallery, the theme
of that space is really designers who have created garments for the Madonna,
for the Virgin and Child, within churches.
We have two examples, Yves Saint Laurent and also Riccardo Tisci, who created an extraordinary
dress and cape for his local church in Puglia.
And the Medieval Sculpture Hall was inspired by a traditional layout of a church, with
a nave, a central aisle, and two side aisles.
It's separated by a large choir screen, and that choir screen is being used as a device
to separate the earthly hierarchy from the celestial hierarchy.
So before you pass through the choir screen, it's focusing on the different forms of dress
worn by the clergy—priests, bishops, and the pope— but also the habits worn by women religious.
It articulates the differences, primarily through color, that establishes that hierarchy.
If you were to turn round, there's a balcony in which we have twenty-one choral robes that
were created by Balenciaga for a choir in Spain, in San Sebastian.
The original design was created by Balenciaga in 1945, and he redesigned the dress in the
mid-sixties, and we have the redesign.
The original design was prompted by women who worked in his workrooms, who were also
members of the choir.
And there is there's one collection that Thierry Mugler created called "The Winter of Angels"
in the eighties, based on the Archangel Gabriel, including a gold dress that has three-foot-span
wings, sprayed and painted gold.
And then you enter the Treasury, and in the Treasury are pieces that, again, relate directly
to some of the artworks there, including rosary beads, which was the sort of accessory par
excellence of the Gothic subculture.
As you walk through the choir screen, you enter the celestial hierarchy, with designers
who've been inspired by the cult of the Virgin Mary.
We have an extraordinary wedding dress by Christian Lacroix, and that was inspired by
a processional Madonna.
The Lehman Wing focuses on the cult of saints and the cult of angels.
Some of the earliest examples in the exhibition are on display there, including two dresses
by Jeanne Lanvin—one that belongs in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, that dates to
1939, that was directly inspired by the angels depicted in Fra Angelico's paintings,
the blue, in particular, which became known as the Lanvin blue, and it was a specific dye
that she developed.
And also a suite of dresses that were designed by the American designers Rodarte, and they
were directly inspired by Fra Angelico's frescoes at San Marco.
And the finale to that particular collection was a dress that was inspired by Bernini's
Saint Teresa.