Poster of the exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. Photo by Nick Knight

Spring by Beatrice Brandini

This year the great New York museum will dedicate its splendid halls to the exhibition entitled: Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion (10 May – 10 September 2024). That is, wonderfully fragile clothes to be (perhaps) worn only once and then scrupulously preserved in the archives of the Costume Institute.

Christina Dior dress (detail) Spring Summer 1952 Photo Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

The clothes and accessories on display, around 250 pieces that are part of the museum’s permanent collection, many on public display for the first time, span four centuries, and will be divided into three sub-themes: Earth, Sea and Sky.

To understand what will then be the dress code of the most Instagrammed event in the universe, we must start from afar, that is, from the 1962 story of the same name by J. G. Ballard (author best known for the novel “Empire of the Sun”).

Loewe, Jonathan Anderson, fall/winter 2023–24. Nina Ricci and Jules-François Crahay (ca. 1958) Photo Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

The story, rather disturbing in its veracity and modernity, tells of Count Axel and his wife, intent on living a utopian life of art and beauty. The villa in which they live overlooks a “magical” garden, where every single natural element is perfect, sparkling and crystalline, and their life flows chasing an ideal of perfection (a very current theme: a perfect and sparkling life, but often only facade, the one that appears on social media).

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, spring/summer 2011; Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sally Victor, Hat (ca. 1958). Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Beyond the villa, real life, in which an increasingly intrusive crowd ends up descending on their luxurious home. In the end the garden will be nothing more than the ghost of itself, completely abandoned, in which the only trace of the two spouses will be two statues completely surrounded by threatening and poisonous plants.

Christian Dior “Venus” and “Junon” ball gowns, fall/winter 1949–50. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The theme of flowers is one of the recurring and cyclical themes of fashion. Always synonymous with femininity and romanticism, in which, especially in high fashion, we witness wonderful creations, rich in craftsmanship and preciousness.

British Jacket (ca. 1615−20) Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Costume Institute, said: “Fashion is one of the most exciting art forms because of its connection to the body. It is imbued with memory and emotions and we relate to it mainly through our senses…”

Charles Frederick Worth , Ball gown, (ca. 1887); Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is perhaps no coincidence the choice of this theme, in a very complicated and threatening historical moment with ongoing and imminent wars, fashion, with its language, reflects contemporary culture and society; but also nature as a metaphor for human fragility and fashion (see the waltz of armchairs, increasingly incongruent and frequent departures and returns).

Sleeping Beauty, 1959 Disney

Even in Ballard’s story we understand that while destruction looms, the countess plays Mozart and Bach; in other words, beauty will NOT save us, but it will be precious even at the point of death…

Good life to everyone!

Beatrice