As many people brim with excitement for the upcoming holidays, fashion lovers are already looking forward to next spring.
In a press statement released on Nov. 8, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) revealed the theme for The Costume Institute’s Spring 2024 exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”
The exhibition will run from May 10 through Sept. 2, 2024, at The Met, while, the coinciding star-studded Costume Institute Benefit, also known as The Met Gala, will be held on May 6, 2024, to celebrate the exhibition’s opening and raise funds for the institute.
According to The Met, the exhibit will feature “approximately 250 garments and accessories spanning four centuries.”
Andrew Bolton, the Curator in Charge at The Costume Institute, said that the exhibition aims to give new life to these archival pieces by appealing to viewers’ senses through technologies including video animation, soundscapes and light projection.
“When an item of clothing enters our collection, its status is changed irrevocably. What was once a vital piece of a person’s lived experience is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled,” Bolton told The Met. “The exhibition endeavors to reanimate these artworks by re-awakening their sensory capacities through a diverse range of technologies, affording visitors sensorial ‘access’ to rare historical garments and rarefied contemporary fashions.”
The Met stated that pieces will be paired with nature-centric iconography and technologies to reinvigorate them. The ceiling of one room “will be projection-mapped with a Hitchcockian swarm of black birds” that surround a pre-World War II black tulle evening dress, according to The Met.
The Met said they hope for the comparison between fashion and nature to emphasize the “fragility and ephemerality of fashion.”
The Met stated that in order to further highlight the delicateness of fashion, a series of garments too fragile to be dressed on mannequins will be displayed in glass “coffins,” hence the exhibition title “Sleeping Beauties,” for viewers to observe their states of deterioration. Even these extremely delicate pieces will be given new life.
“Select ‘beauties’ will be brought back to life by the illusion technique known as Pepper’s Ghost,” The Met stated.
Pepper’s Ghost is an illusion technique that is often used in the theater, cinema, museums, concerts and amusement parks in which an image of an off-stage object is projected in order to appear as though it is in front of the audience.
Further emphasizing the life of fashion, The Met said that the exhibition will juxtapose historical fashions with their contemporary counterparts by showcasing the pieces together. According to Vogue Magazine, works by contemporary designers including Phillip Lim, Stella McCartney and Connor Ives will be showcased in the exhibit.
This year’s lead sponsor, Tiktok, will make the exhibition and benefit possible, while Loewe will provide further support.
Additional event details and co-chairs remain unannounced.
Though the exhibition itself has sparked much excitement, perhaps the most highly anticipated aspect of the event is seeing how our favorite celebrities will interpret the theme at The Met Gala.
The theme allows for much creativity from celebrities and stylists given the emphasis on a range of topics including fashion’s evolution, functionality and artistic roles, and fashion’s parallels to nature, but until the Gala, we can only predict who will participate, guess who will be best dressed based on previous galas, and hope that designers’ works reflect the complexities and possibilities of next year’s theme.