Hollywood takes the field for "
Anthology of Fashion
", the great spring exhibition with which the
Costume Institute of the Met will celebrate the birth of American style
.
Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, Regina King and Chloé Zhao are among the directors who will help in the installation by producing "cinematographic cartoons" accompanying the approximately one hundred garments set in the 13 rooms of the American Wing which reconstruct real period homes.
Coinciding with New York Fashion Week, curator Andrew Bolton anticipated the details of the exhibition which, accompanied by the famous gala on the first Monday of May, will mark, in the hopes of the Met and New Yorkers, the return to the "new normal" after the pandemic.
The spring review will follow up on the other exhibition, "Lexicon", on the vocabulary of fashion made in the USA, opened in September, even if "in reality it represents the first chapter", explained Bolton, flanked by the director of the museum Max Hollein. and by Anna Wintour, the godmother of the gala to which the Costume Institute is dedicated.
In all, eight directors will help the scholars in the installation: the others are Janicza Bravo, Julie Dash, Autumn de Wilde and Tom Ford, the stylist and president of the Council of Fashion Designers in America who also counts a strong presence among his 'hats' as a filmmaker.
The goal is to show "unfamiliar narratives filtered through the imaginations of some of America's most visionary filmmakers," Bolton said: "
Many protagonists had so far been footnotes.
Many were women, like Ann Lowe, great-granddaughter of slaves and the first African-American to break into fashion, who became famous in 1953 for designing Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress. "
All the clothes on display come from the museum's rich collections and some "complicate the history of the brand" like two
Brooks Brother
s coats: one that belonged to Abraham Lincoln and the other to a slave waiter from a wealthy house.
Eight garments were designed by Charles James, a British from Berkshire naturalized in the USA who after World War II gave American women the dream of dressing like and better than Parisians and whose "butterfly" evening dresses will be set, directed by Scorsese, in a twentieth century living room designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Instead, it is Ford who will have to recreate, in front of the panoramic view of the palace of Versailles by John Vanderlyn, the most daring fashion show in history.
The famous "Battle of Versailles"
Halston, Steven Burrows, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass and Anne Klein
accompanied by the young assistant Donna Karan) fighting against the French colleagues of the time: Givenchy, Ungaro, Cardin, YSL and Marc Bohan for Dior.
The Americans also won thanks to the verve of Liza Minnelli, who had recently won the Oscar for "Cabaret" and opened and closed the stars and stripes catwalk accompanied by ten Broadway dancers.
And there are those who say that it was then that "made in the USA" fashion really made itself known as an international phenomenon.