A history of the human body at “Costume Art,” the new Costume Institute exhibit

“To understand fashion, we must move beyond the static object and consider its life in the world; its intimacy with the body, its role in shaping subjectivity,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the press preview for its latest exhibition, simply titled “Costume Art.” Officially opening on May 10, the exhibition brings together garments and objects from the institution’s many curatorial departments, and is in many ways a celebration of what it means to be human. Bolton continued, “In wearing clothes, we don’t simply express who we are, we become who we are. This is what makes fashion different from any other art form. It collapses the boundary between the subject and object; the wearer is of canvas and collaborator, observer, and participant. Fashion in this sense generates a form of knowledge that's embodied, sensorial, and deeply human.”

If the concept seems confusing at first, the ideas make perfect sense once one enters the galleries and is greeted by a slew of “naked dresses.” But no, these are not the kinds that we’re used to seeing on the red carpet, but rather designers’s interpretation of the naked body itself; Walter Van Beirendonck’s sheer leggings with a print of the male anatomy, a beige nylon dress by LÙCHEN with silver metal hooks and eyes that both mimic and cover the female model’s nipples and pubic area, juxtaposed with Renaissance engravings of Adam and Eve. The wall text asserts that the nude is never neutral. Across history, ideals of beauty, modesty, and exposure have shaped how bodies are perceived, regulated, and desired.

A gallery view of the Classical Body.

From the Naked & Nude Body, we move into the Classical Body, where we are greeted by nine pleated and draped gowns from late 19th- and early 20th-century designers such as Fortuny, Madame Grès, Vionnet, and others, juxtaposed with Greek ceramics and sculptures from the 4th and 5th centuries BC. The feeling is akin to walking right into the gates of heaven, knowing that you are being welcomed into the entire history of human sartorial knowledge in a way that can certainly take your breath away. (Even if you are not a fashion fanatic, the effect is quite impressive!)

In the first section, titled “Diversity in Bodily Being,” the rest of the categories include the Abstract Body (come for the bustled gowns and the “Grecian Bend” and stay for designer Georgina Godley’s “Lumps and Bumps” dresses from 1986—a full decade before Rei Kawakubo’s iconic Comme des Garçons collection of the same name); the Reclaimed Body, which looks at the way that the standard norms of beauty were reclaimed and subverted at the end of the 20th century (an Ann-Sofie Back ensemble of a white shirt worn with red sheer “BBL” tights, paired with a suggestive painting of a bottom by Hugette Caland in shades of passion red and orange); the Pregnant Body, (a Di Petsa wet gown, an Alessandro Michele for Gucci pleated dress with embroidered ovaries, and a fantastic Gourd-shaped hanging wall basket for flowers from the Japanese Meiji Period); and the Corpulent Body, reclaimed within contemporary fat studies as the “fat body,” a neutral descriptor rather than a pejorative, as the catalog states which includes a classic Dior “New Look” suit made for the French singer Yseult, and pieces by many other contemporary London-based designers like Sinead O’Dwyer, Ester Manas, and Karoline Vitto, shown with Mesopotamian sculptures.

A gallery view of the Disabled Body.

For the Disabled Body section, the Costume Institute worked with Sinéad Burke and her organization, Tilting the Lens (mannequins were also made of her body to display dresses from Vivienne Westwood, Malcom McLaren, and Burberry. The pairings with art are said to expand on the concept of “disability aesthetics,” defined in the catalog as how the qualities often celebrated in modern art—fragmentation, asymmetry, tactile dissonance—resonate with the realities of disability; a framework that conceives the disabled body as an active site of negotiation instead of a passive object of clinical scrutiny. It does make for a particularly striking display.

The second section, “Bodily Being in its Universality,” really digs into the “human” part of being a human; with categories like the Inscribed Body, which explores the historical and modern practice of tattooing (expect lots of Jean Paul Gaultier), but also scarification (with perhaps my favorite pairing in the whole show, a photograph by Richard Avedon’s of Andy Warhol’s torso following his many medical procedures next to a black dress by New York designer Susan Cianciolo with similar crude stitching); the Anatomical Body which looks at representations of what lies beneath our skin from medical journals and the work of designers like Thom Browne and Robert Wun; the Vital Body which looks at how “life has been defined by pulsation and circulation of blood,” best illustrated perhaps by a fully beade Vivienne Westwood and Mr. Pearl jacket with a trompe l’oeil design of a man’s muscles with oozing wounds paired with a 1500 engraving by Dürer; the Aging Body, with its sagging, lumpy silhouettes (the work of Sarah Lucas and Joan Semmel surrounding a mannequin wearing a shroud featuring an image of an elderly woman by the Dutch designer Imme Van Der Haak, who prints to-scale photos of people onto silk so that one can “wear” a person); and finally the Mortal Body, which includes both mourning garments, paired with representations of death (lots of skulls!)

A gallery view of the Aging Body.

“Costume Art” is a cerebral show that showcases the depths of knowledge of the curators, but also the depth of humanity itself. It is not just a feast for the eyes, it is a collection of objects that force you to get close, to read the labels, and think about the works, think about yourself in the context of the works—how do they make you feel? There is a saying that there is universality in specificity, and the idiosyncrasies of every single garment, object, and artwork on display certainly attest to that.

At the preview, Anna Wintour said, “It’s about every body, but it’s also about everybody,” and she meant every single one of us. Bolton later echoed her thoughts thusly, “The history of art cannot be told without the history of dress, and the history of dress is fundamentally the history of the human body.” And that’s what lies at the heart of “Costume Art.”