Met Gala 2024: this is the exhibition called Sleeping Beauties

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Met) ‘revives’ more than 200 historical dresses and accessories in its major annual fashion exhibition, which highlights the use of technologies to allow visitors to appreciate the delicate objects with the five senses.

The exhibition, which was presented to the press this Monday and will open to the public on May 10, is titled ‘Sleeping beauties‘, in reference to those antique dresses so fragile that they cannot even be placed on mannequins, and that are displayed in display cases from which they must be observed as if it were a microscope.

This is the theme of the charity gala that is being held this Monday afternoon (Met Gala) and that finances the collection of the Met Fashion Institute, directed by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who invites hundreds of celebrities to this exclusive event with tickets at $75,000, according to Time.

The curator of the Fashion Institute, Andrew Bolton, He explained that when a garment enters the museum’s collection its status changes “irrevocably,” going from being part of a person’s life experience to “an immobile work of art that can no longer be worn, heard, touched or smelled.”

Through technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), alive,” Bolton said.

An example of ‘sleeping beauty’ is the dress ‘Mariposa’ with cascades of silk chiffon Charles Jamesof 1955of which the Met has two: one in impeccable condition and another badly damaged, and by placing them side by side he explains how their use and design contribute to their deterioration.

The galleries are also distributed into three sections that explore natural themes based on land, air and water: in one of them, decorated like a garden full of floral hats, you can enjoy designs by sewing masters such as Cristobal Balenciaga, Hubert of Givenchy o Elsa Schiaparelli.

As a curiosity, in that room hoh, a Loewe coat planted in the ground what “will gradually die during exposure”according to the Met.

Another incentive is a dress Jeanne Hallée from around 1913 with a ‘locked skirt’, which made it difficult for a woman to pass, and which comes back to ‘life’ with a technological technique in which a woman is seen carrying it and gradually turning into an insect.