What To Know About The Costume Institute’s Spring 2015 Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

Fashion’s biggest night will take place this evening as designers and their muses, Silicon Valley power players and more take turns down the red carpet to either have their best fashion moment or be the next Kim Kardashian in couch cover floral moment(we will never forget it). All will be on hand to get first look at the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit China: Through the Looking Glass.

 

This year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit, bka Met Gala or #MetBall Anna Wintour’s grand party, co-chaired by Jennifer Lawrence, Gong Li, Marissa Mayer, Wendi Murdoch, and Anna Wintour with with Honorary Chair Silas Chou, is the Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

Just as most major museum exhibits open with grand benefit’s giving VVIPs the chance to be one of the first to preview, The Costume Institute’s benefit serves the same purpose and their spring 2015 exhibition China: Through the Looking Glass will open to the public from May 7-August 16.

What to know about China: Through the Looking Glass?
• It was curated by Andrew Bolton with Wong Kar Wai as Exhibition Artistic Director

• The exhibit itself explores the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion and how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries. In this collaboration between The Costume Institute and the Department of Asian Art, high fashion will be juxtaposed with Chinese costumes, paintings, porcelains, and other art, including films, to reveal enchanting reflections of Chinese imagery.

•The exhibit is a collaboration between The Costume Institute and the Department of Asian Art, coincides with the Museum’s year-long centennial celebration of the Asian Art Department, which was created as a separate curatorial department in 1915. China: Through the Looking Glass is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator, with the support of Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, both of The Costume Institute.

•It will be presented in MoMA Chinese Galleries and Anna Wintour Costume Center

• A few of the pieces from the exhibit:

Designers in the exhibition will include Cristobal Balenciaga, Travis Banton, Bulgari, Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Callot Soeurs, Cartier, Roberto Cavalli, Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Tom Ford for Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Valentino Garavani, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Picciolo for Valentino, Craig Green, Guo Pei, Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Ralph Lauren, Christian Louboutin, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Alexander McQueen for Givenchy, Edward Molyneux, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Dries van Noten, Jean Patou, Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Paul Smith, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vivienne Tam, Giambattista Valli, Vivienne Westwood, Jason Wu, and Laurence Xu.

“Through the looking glass of fashion, designers conjoin disparate stylistic references into a fantastic pastiche of Chinese aesthetic and cultural traditions.”-Andrew Bolton