About Time: Fashion and Duration Exhibition at The Met
One of the most significant exhibitions this year celebrates fashion past and present, bringing together iconic costumes from designers such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Alexander McQueen, and more. Tracing 150 years of fashion history, About Time: Fashion and Duration opens today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute and will run until February 2021.
The exhibition was initially scheduled to open on May 4 to coincide with the annual Met Gala, and the Met’s 150th anniversary, but the pandemic delayed those plans until now, just in time for the holidays. This presentation traces 150 years of fashion history through a disrupted timeline that connects past and present. Guests will be guided through the Costume Institute’s exhibition by “ghost narrator” Virginia Woolf, whose writings offer a lens through which visitors can examine the styles on display and their connection to time.
“Fashion is indelibly connected to time. It not only reflects and represents the spirit of the times, but it also changes and develops with the times, serving as an especially sensitive and accurate timepiece,” stated curator Andrew Bolton. “Through a series of chronologies, the exhibition uses the concept of duration to analyze the temporal twists and turns of fashion history.”
The exhibition employs French philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of la durée (duration), emphasizing that time is subjective to the individual. The timeline will unfold in two adjacent galleries styled as enormous clock faces, featuring monochrome designs indicating minutes on the clock face, organized around the principle of 60 minutes of fashion, state the organizers. Each “minute” will showcase a pair of garments from different timelines, with the primary work representing the linear nature of fashion and the secondary work its cyclical character.
Among the remarkable designs on display, visitors can find a black silk faille princess-line dress from the late 1870s paired with an Alexander McQueen “Bumster” skirt from 1995. Additionally, a black silk satin dress with leg-o’-mutton sleeves from the mid-1890s will be presented alongside a Comme des Garçons deconstructed item from 2004. Notable creations from Virgil Abloh (for Off-White), Jonathan Anderson (for JW Anderson and Loewe), Cristóbal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Tom Ford (for Gucci), Nicolas Ghesquière (for Louis Vuitton), and more, will also be featured.
Due to health and safety regulations, the museum is currently operating at reduced capacity. Tickets are available for designated time slots, which can be reserved online or obtained in person. General admission tickets are priced at $25 for adults, $17 for seniors, and $12 for students.
