[ ♫ ]
Hello, I’m Max Hollein, the Marina Kellen
French Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though today is the first Monday in
May, we are not rolling out the red carpet on the front steps, but we will in September
– subject to government guidelines, of course – and again in May of 2022, for the galas
celebrating The Costume Institute’s upcoming two-part exhibition. This double-header will
consider how fashion reflects evolving notions of identity in America, and the aesthetic
and cultural impact of fashion on three centuries of American life.
Part one of the exhibition -- In America: A Lexicon of Fashion – will open on September
18 in the Anna Wintour Costume Center. This show will celebrate The Costume Institute’s
75th anniversary and explore a modern vocabulary of American fashion. Part Two, In America:
An Anthology of Fashion, will open in the American Wing period rooms on May 5, 2022
and explore the development of American fashion through narratives that relate to the histories
of those spaces. Both parts will close on September 5, 2022.
I am excited to be here in The Costume Institute’s Collections area surrounded by stellar works
by American fashion designers which will be featured in part two of the exhibition -- an
Ann Lowe gown and two ensembles by Stephen Burrows; as well
as this intricately-conceived evening dress from 1902 by a little-known, extraordinary
American dressmaker, Lucie Monnay. These pieces usually live on the other side
of this wall with the other 30,000 ensembles in the collection. Andrew
Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, and his team have selected
these objects and many others to tell the story of American fashion and the industry
that has supported this department for three-quarters of a century. I want to thank Andrew and the
Costume Institute staff as well as everyone within and outside The Met for their outstanding
work in making these presentations possible under quite challenging circumstances.
When part one of the exhibition opens down the hall in the galleries this September
Works by pioneers of American fashion
will appear alongside designs by a diverse group of contemporary designers to illustrate
the shifting tides of American fashion. Nathan Crowley and Shane Valentino, who have
designed many past Costume Institute shows, will work with cinematographer Bradford Young,
and The Met’s Design department to create the space.
Film director Melina Matsoukas will create an open-ended
film which we will project in the galleries, and to which she will add content over the
course of the show. Instagram will sponsor both parts of the exhibition
and we are so grateful for their support. Special thanks the head of Instagram, Adam
Mosseri, and to Eva Chen, director of fashion partnerships, for their generosity. You will
hear from Eva next. We are also thankful to Condé Nast for its
decades of support, and of course to Anna Wintour. I suspect that like the New York
City we know and love, Anna never sleeps. In the course of the next year, she will oversee
two Met Galas, which provide The Costume Institute’s primary source of annual funding. For the
gala on September 13, she will serve as an honorary chair with Adam Mosseri and Tom Ford.
The co-chairs will be Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish,
Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka. Now it is my pleasure to introduce Eva Chen.
You will then hear from Andrew Bolton, who will be also introduce
a short video which Sterling Ruby created in conjunction with the exhibition. Eva…
Hello, from the steps of The Met. I'm Eva
Chen and I'm the Head of Fashion and Shopping at Instagram. Instagram has been a long-time
supporter of The Met and The Costume Institute, but we are especially excited to be part of
this year's exhibition. From the day it launched. Instagram has been the home for fashion. We
have over one billion users and every day #Fashion is one of the top five hashtags
used. Whether you're an industry insider, like a designer, model, or stylist, or an
everyday teen somewhere around the world, you know
that Instagram is the place to go get inspired and build community. Over the last year, though,
Instagram has also been the place for real-time conversations around activism and global movements
around social justice, equity, race, and gender. I was inspired to see that this year's exhibition
will highlight many of those issues that are at the core of culture today at what Instagram
is really all about. And this year's exhibition will also have video elements as well as designs
by a group of young, diverse designers. I love. I can't wait for you all to see the
exciting Instagram content we have planned for Reels and IGTV. I hope this exhibition
helps spark a global conversation about what fashion in America means today and tomorrow.
Now let's head inside and see what Andrew is up to. I'll see you guys on Instagram. Bye.
[ ♫ ]
Thank you very much, Eva. As Max said, this year marks The Costume Institute’s
75th anniversary, and we wanted to commemorate the occasion with a yearlong
celebration of American fashion. When The Costume Institute was founded in
1946, one of its ambitions was to support the creative efforts of American designers.
And for our 75th anniversary, we wanted to revisit
this ambition – especially after the past year, which has been especially challenging
for the fashion community. It’s been incredibly inspiring to see how
designers have responded to the ongoing challenges of the pandemic – how they’ve found new
outlets to express their creativity, and new ways to present their collections.
For several years now, American designers have been at the forefront of discussions
about conscious creativity, especially in regards to sustainability and transparency.
They’ve also been at the vanguard of discussions around diversity and inclusion. The social
justice movements of last summer reinforced their commitment to these issues and also
consolidated their leadership in advancing the conversations.
For me, this past year confirmed what I’d been thinking already – that American fashion
is undergoing another renaissance. The fashion industry – globally – is experiencing
a process of re-invention and self-reflection, and American designers are embracing this
fully this moment of endless possibilities.
So, we wanted to take the opportunity of our anniversary to celebrate this exciting new
phase in American fashion, and examine some of the innovations taking place in the industry.
In an attempt to reclaim the past year, we’ve taken the unprecedented step of presenting
a yearlong exhibition divided into two parts. Both parts are distinct, but they’re connected
by our efforts to reevaluate commonly-held assumptions about American fashion.
Part 1 – In America: A Lexicon of Fashion – opens this September in the Anna Wintour
Costume Center, and part 2 – In America: An Anthology of Fashion – opens next May
in the American period rooms. In terms of its conceptualization, part 2 preceded part
1, and actually inspired and informed it. For many years now, we’ve been re-examining
our collection to uncover hidden or untold stories with a view to complicating and problematizing
monolithic interpretations of fashion. Our intention for part 2, is to bring these
stories together in an anthology that challenges received
histories and offers alternate readings of American fashion.
The anthology will unfold as a series of discrete stories in the American period rooms, which
present a survey of more than 300 years of domestic life.
The stories will be grounded in the complex histories of the rooms, and will speak to
the role of fashion in framing notions of American identity – both individual and
collective. Key themes will
include the emergence of an identifiable American style, and the rise
of the named designer with an individual aesthetic
vision. And to highlight the storytelling aspect of
the exhibition – and to re-address the assumption
that American fashion is non-narrative – the stories will be presented as cinematically-staged
vignettes produced in collaboration with American film directors.
These immersive and evocative presentations will bring to the fore the contributions of
forgotten and lesser-known designers who’ve defined American fashion.
As we worked on these stories, we were struck by their emotional resonance. Traditionally,
American fashion has been described in terms of the American tenets of simplicity, practicality,
and functionality. Fashion’s more emotional qualities have tended to be reserved for European
fashion. In part 1, we’ll be reconsidering this perception by establishing a modern lexicon
of American fashion based on the emotional qualities of dress.
As fashion is in the process of re-evaluating and re-inventing itself, it’s important
that we create a new vocabulary that’s more relevant and more reflective of the times
in which we’re living. I think one of the most valuable lessons that we all learned
from the social justice movements was the magnitude
of language, of terminology, and nomenclature.
More fundamentally, this vocabulary will address
the creative impulses behind American fashion as well as its social, political, and environmental
motivations.
And here are a few examples of the fashions we’ll be featuring.
[ ♫ ]
This dress of pink plaid silk taffeta is by Christopher John Rogers, one of the finalists
of this year’s LVMH prize. It’s from his autumn/winter 2020 collection.
As you can see, its size, shape, and color recall the dramatic ballgowns designed
by Charles James in the 1950s. Christopher won
the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in 2019, and the prize money provided the resources to achieve
the splendor and richness of this evening dress.
This dress is by Connor Ives, another finalist of this year’s LVMH prize. Connor recently
graduated from Central Saint Martins in London, and this piece is from his graduation
collection called “The American Dream,” which was based on female archetypes that
he grew up with watching on television. The collection was comprised of repurposed vintage
clothing, deadstock fabric, and recycled materials that reflect a kind of new Americana.
This dress is a contemporary representation of the debutante,
It’s made of white silk organza donated by Wes Gordon of Carolina Herrera and it’s
embroidered with thousands of recycled plastic florals
made in collaboration with The Sustainable Sequin Company.
This piece is by Andre Walker, and it's from his spring/summer 2018 collection called
“Non-Existent Patterns.” Each piece in the collection was created from patterns taken
from garments he’d designed between 1982 and 1986. The collection was shown at the
Musée des Art Décoratifs in Paris, and was partly-sponsored by the American company,
Pendleton Woolen Mills. This piece is made from their Glacier National Park blankets,
which have been in production since the early 1900s.
This dress of white cotton poplin is by Prabal Gurung, and it’s from his spring/summer
2020 collection. The collection celebrated Prabal’s 10th anniversary, and it combined
classic American designs with traditional Eastern dress. Here, the triangular cutout
at the waist – which is a signature of Prabal’s work – references the wrapped construction
of an Indian saree. The statement on the sash – “Who Gets To Be American” – reflects
Prabal’s activism on behalf of American immigrants as well as his own path to citizenship,
This piece is by Sterling Ruby, and it’ll be shown at the entrance of part 1 and the
exit of part 2 as a way to connect the two exhibitions. It’s a black-washed denim wrap
that Sterling calls the “Veil Flag.” He made it during the social justice movements
of last summer, and at the time he issued the following statement: “Given the current
political climate in the United States, I wanted to explore the concept of the flag
as a signifier in flux and how our relationship to it may change when it is activated as a
veil.” Sterling has very kindly created a site-specific
video of the “Veil Flag” in front of the Bank façade in The Met’s American Wing,
which is the entrance to the period rooms. The film touches on many of the themes that
we’ll be exploring in the two-part exhibition, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce
it now. Thank you so much for joining us today,
and here’s the film.
[drums play]