Chinese Fashion Takes Over the Met
China is becoming an increasingly influential power not only in politics, but in the arts world.
Chinese-inspired gowns by designers like Alexander McQueen, Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Guo Pei (who also created Rihanna's famous yellow furry dress for the Metropolitan gala) are now being shown next to old vases, paintings and ancient Chinese scriptures for the exhibit "China: Through the Looking Glass."
The show features over 150 costumes and accessories by more than 40 designers, as well as movie clips in a total area of 30,000 square feet — three times as large as a regular spring show at the museum. "This is the biggest intervention we have taken,” said Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell during remarks at the press preview in the Temple of Dendur.
Among the luminaries who attended the event were former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and Yahoo president Marissa Mayer, who sponsored the exhibit.
Andrew Bolton, a curator in The Costume Institute, said the idea was to explore the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion. The show is inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland; it’s not about China per se, he explained, but a collective imagination of China.
“Like Alice's make-believe world, the China reflected in the fashion in the exhibition is a fictional, fabulous invention, offering an alternate reality with a dream-like, almost hallucinatory illogic,” he said.
The Costume Center galleries focus on Imperial China, the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. It includes scenes from movies by Chinese directors as Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee and Wong Kar Wai.
The Chinese Galleries showcase fashion from the 1700s to current times that is presented next to decorative arts from Imperial China. Designers in the exhibition include Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Guo Pei, Vivienne Tam, Vivienne Westwood and Jason Wu.
Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai served as the artistic direction of the exhibit, and he said it aims to achieve many goals. “It's a celebration of fashion, cinema and creative liberty. It is an important time in human history for cross-cultural dialogue. And I am proud and delighted to contribute to the conversation,” he said.
The show is on view through Aug. 16.
WNYC is funded by sponsors and member donations
