Who are we without our clothes? It’s a question—involving identity, societal norms, and cultural history—that has been at the center of how we discuss fashion for decades. It’s refreshing, then, that the 2024 Costume Institute exhibit poses something new: what are our clothes without us?
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion features 220 historical and contemporary objects from the Met’s collection, showcasing conservation efforts to keep the pieces intact, and “re-awakening” their intended purpose of being worn. Using nature as a narrative focus, curator Andrew Bolton and his team have created a multi-sensory experience that ground the items on display as objects intended for the everyday world, rather than to merely look at.
“Initially, what I was doing was trying to reawaken masterworks in our collection to the senses,” Bolton tells Palmer. But after going through some 33,000 pieces, he was struck by how nature was a recurring theme. “There’s such a connection between what I’m trying to do— showing the fact that fashion is ephemeral, is impermanent, is transient—but it’s also about rebirth and renewal and simplicity. Nature has the exact same characteristics. So I really landed on that because nature, as a through line through the exhibition, allows you to speak about these issues. In a way the overarching metaphor for the exhibition, because they share so many characteristics.”
Narrative categories include flowers (roses, tulips, and poppies are highlighted specifically), insects, birds, the ocean, and more. Throughout them are the show’s namesake, the “sleeping beauties”—garments in such a state of decay that they are too fragile to even be worn by a mannequin. They are instead displayed laying flat, lifeless, hinting at the most natural element of all: people themselves. This is where the show really shines.
The most technically intriguing (and inventive) gallery displays the wardrobe of heiress and socialite Millicent Rogers. Exhibiting clothing of a notable figure is part and parcel for museums, usually tracing the history of each piece and where they were worn. Sleeping Beauties takes things a step further by identifying molecules found on Rogers’s clothes, and allowing visitors to smell them. Everything from perfume to unwashed hair is found and presented, and in this regard, Rogers is in the room with you, her memory alive again. It’s a far more visceral experience than an AI chatbot found later in the show, that allows you to “talk” to another socialite, because it’s real. Imperfectly human.
Garments owned by Millicent Rogers, with tubes allowing you to smell them.
It’s not the only interactive experience in the show. In other areas, visitors can hear the sound of gowns in motion (including an Alexander McQueen dress made from razor clam shells). Meanwhile, two gallery walls have been outfitted with embossed in ways that mimic the feel of garments in the room. It doesn’t exactly give you a sense of the fabric, but the ability to feel the gallery itself really brings you into the exhibit.
In this, the Costume Institute is finally dealing with a problem that arises from displaying fashion in an art museum: how to showcase fashion as a living artform without the “living” part. Placing clothing on display as a fixed work of art changes the inherent nature of the pieces. The reason Sleeping Beauties feels so energetic is that it adds this context back in. The result is one of the most imaginative ways a museum has presented fashion yet—and it’s genuinely a lot of fun.
One item in Sleeping Beauties that ties all the metaphorical elements together: a coat by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe (an exhibit sponsor), that is growing oat, rye, and wheat grass. Currently, the plants are healthy. But over the course of the show’s run they will eventually die. All that will remain will be the garment underneath, the object intact but clearly missing something.
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion opens May 10 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and runs through September 2, 2024. Click here for more information.