Andrew Bolton unveils what to expect from "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion" and "In America: An Anthology of Fashion."
Everything You Need to Know About the 2021 Met Gala and Costume Institute Exhibition
“Though today is the first Monday in May, we are not rolling out the red carpet on the front steps,” says the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Marina Kellen French Director Max Hollein. But that doesn’t preclude the release of exciting new information about the Costume Institute’s two-part 2021 exhibit In America: A Lexicon of Fashion and In America: An Anthology of Fashion. Hollein was joined by Eva Chen of Instagram and Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, this morning at a virtual press conference that revealed all the details about the upcoming exhibits and galas.
Part one of the exhibition, A Lexicon of Fashion, will open September 18 at the Anna Wintour Costume Center at The Met, marking the Costume Institute's 75th anniversary. An intimate gala to celebrate the exhibit’s opening will take place on September 13, co-chaired by Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka with honorary chairs Tom Ford, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri, and Anna Wintour. The exhibit will be organized to resemble a home, with intersecting walls and rooms, that will establish what Bolton calls “a new vocabulary that’s more relevant and more reflective of the times in which we’re living.”
“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 more European fashion,” Bolton says. “In part one we’ll be reconsidering this perception by reestablishing a modern lexicon of fashion based on the emotional qualities of dress.” The many rooms in this part of the exhibit will be titled to reflect the personal and emotional relationship we have to fashion: “wellbeing” for the kitchen galleries, “aspiration” for the office, and “trust,” the living room, for example.
In pushing the human connections to our clothes, Bolton is writing a new history of American style that focuses less on sportswear and Seventh Avenue dressmakers, instead framing designers as creators, innovators, and artists. “Taken together these qualities will compromise a modern vocabulary of American fashion that prioritizes values, emotions, and sentiments over the sportswear principles of realism, rationalism, and pragmatism,” he says. Pieces from Christopher John Rogers, Sterling Ruby, Conner Ives, Prabal Gurung, and Andre Walker feature in part one of the exhibition. Ruby’s Veil Flag, a short film presented at Paris Fashion Week, was recreated at the Met and its central piece, a denim American flag, will open the show, while director Melina Matsoukas will create a film for the exhibit that will evolve over the course of its run.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Steff Yotka
