From McQueen to Schiaparelli and Prada
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Elsa Schiaparelli
Miuccia Prada
The Metropolitan Museum has announced its next Costume Institute exhibit! Honoring the two woman as the leading ladies of fashion, the show entitled Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion will explore everything from the role of women to art and politics and its relativity to fashion. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias’s “Impossible Interviews” for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton will originate fictive conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Drawn primarily from The Costume Institute’s collection and the Prada Archive, as well as other institutions and private collections, signature objects by both designers will be compared and contrasted to explore the extraordinary impact of their aesthetics and sensibilities on contemporary notions of fashionability.
Last year’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty became one of the top ten most visited exhibits at the museum, with over 650,000 visitors. McQueen’s aesthetic showcased his vision of fashion as a form of expression rather than wearable clothing. This past year’s impressive exhibit is one tough act to follow, but Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, believes this is the perfect mix to follow up Savage Beauty. “Given the role Surrealism and other art movements play in the designs of both Schiaparelli and Prada, it seems only fitting that their inventive creations be explored here at the Met,” said Campbell. “Schiaparelli’s collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau as well as Prada’s current Fondazione Prada push art and fashion ever closer, in a direct, synergistic, and culturally redefining relationship.”
The theme of marrying art and fashion is apparent throughout various components of the future exhibit, starting with the title Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion. Based on the works of Umberto Eco, On Beauty and On Ugliness. Both books explore the philosophy of our sensibilities from the classical world to modern times. The videos in galleries of stimulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada will follow the book’s template. It should be interesting to see this different curated aesthetic and the combines worlds of two of fashion’s most influential women.
The exhibit will run May 10, 2012 – August 19, 2012. For more information check out The Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibitions Page.
Skeleton dress. Elsa Schiaparelli collaboration with Salvador Dalí, 1938.
Prada Spring 2012
