Fashion Superhero at Costume Institute

An exhibition will take place at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on the subject: Fashion and Fantasy. As honorary Chair of the Gala will be present Giorgio Armani but also the actor George Clooney and the actress Julia Roberts.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Press Release:

As superheroes enjoy a surge in mass popularity not seen since the golden age of comic books in the 1940s, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will explore the symbolic and metaphorical associations between these fictional characters and fashion in Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, an exhibition at the Museum from May 7 through September 1, 2008.

The exhibition will feature approximately 70 ensembles including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear to reveal how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body.The exhibition is made possible by Giorgio Armani. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast. “Today, superhero imagery has suffused almost every aspect of popular culture,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute.

“The superhero’s iconic costume of cape, mask, and bodysuit finds many fashionable permutations. But fashion’s embrace of the superhero extends beyond iconography, to issues of identity, sexuality, and nationalism. Fashion shares with the superhero an inherent metaphorical malleability which fuels its fascination with the idea and the ideal of the superhero.”

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Gala Benefit will take place on Monday, May 5, 2008. Giorgio Armani will serve as Honorary Chair of the Gala. Co-Chairs will be actor George Clooney; actress Julia Roberts; and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.

The exhibition, in the Museum’s first-floor special exhibition galleries, will include movie costumes as well as radical fashions that literally and figuratively reference superhero iconography, including Bernhard Willhelm’s 2006 royal blue dress emblazoned with a red-and-yellow “S” emblem, a 1996 Walter van Beirendonck pink vinyl inflatable jacket, and a John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture corset and bikini bottom from his 2001 “Wonder Woman” collection.

A Thierry Mugler motorcycle bustier with polychrome handlebars and side-view mirrors evokes Ghost Rider in its comic-strip exaggeration, while a Hussein Chalayan Airplane dress with battery-operated moveable flaps shares the Flash’s streamlined aerodynamics. Also included is an array of second-skin body suits for extreme sports, as well as luminous, glow-in-the-dark clothing.

Other designers in the exhibition include Giorgio Armani, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rudi Gernreich, Givenchy, Eiko Ishioka, House of Harlot, Michiko Koshino, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Moschino, Nike, Gareth Pugh, Paco Rabanne, Jeremy Scott, Speedo, and Three As Four.

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art