New York City’s iconic Metropolitan Museum of Art has released details of the upcoming exhibition as well as the key personalities at its famed Met Gala, to be held on May 6.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, says its biggest event of the year, the Met Gala, to be held on May 6, would be co-chaired by Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Lopez, Anna Wintour and Zendaya.

In a press statement, the museum, also known as the Met, has also released new details about Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, the spring exhibition to be held at the Costume Institute.

According to the press statement, the Met says on view from May 10 through September 2, the exhibition will feature approximately 250 garments and accessories that will be connected visually through nature, which also serves as a metaphor for the transience of fashion.

It adds that the show will bring to life the sensory capacities of these masterworks through a wide range of encounters and visitors will be invited to smell the aromatic histories of hats bearing floral motifs, to touch the walls of galleries that will be embossed with the embroidery of select garments and to experience, via the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost, how the ‘hobble skirt’ restricted women’s stride in the early 20th century.

The statement adds that punctuating the galleries will be a series of ‘sleeping beauties’, garments that can no longer be dressed on mannequins due to their extreme fragility.

The Met says that the Gala provides the department with its primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, operations and capital improvements. It adds that the dress code for the evening will be ‘The Garden of Time’, and Shou Chew, Chief Executive Officer of TikTok and Jonathan Anderson, Creative Director of Loewe, will serve as honorary chairs. Following the event, the decorative centrepiece displayed in the Museum’s Great Hall will remain on view to the public through May 7.

‘‘The Met’s innovative spring 2024 Costume Institute exhibition will push the boundaries of our imagination and invite us to experience the multisensory facets of a garment, those facets that deteriorate and become lost after entering a museum collection as an object. Sleeping Beauties will heighten our engagement with these masterpieces of fashion by evoking what it was like to feel, move, hear, smell, and interact with them when they could be worn, ultimately offering a deeper appreciation of the integrity, beauty, and artistic brilliance of the works on display,’’ says Max Hollein, the Museum’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer.

‘‘When an item of clothing enters our collection, its status is changed irrevocably. What was once a vital part of a person’s lived experience is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled. The exhibition endeavors to animate these artworks by re-awakening their sensory capacities through a range of technologies, affording visitors sensorial ‘access’ to rare historical garments and rarefied contemporary fashions. By appealing to the widest possible range of human senses, the show aims to reconnect with the works on display as they were originally intended, with vibrancy, with dynamism, and ultimately with life,’’ says Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute.

Exhibition Overview

The statement adds that Sleeping Beauties will bring to life objects from the Met collection by reactivating their sensory qualities and reengaging visitors’ sensorial perceptions through primary research, conservation analysis and diverse technologies, from artificial intelligence and computer-generated imagery, to traditional formats of x-rays, video animation, light projection and soundscapes.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors will discover a sequence of self-contained galleries organised into three sections focused around earth, air and water. Presented as individual case studies, each gallery will explore a different theme inspired by nature, with historical fashions juxtaposed with contemporary counterparts in an immersive environment intended to engage a visitor’s sense of sight, smell, touch, and hearing.

One gallery will be arranged as a garden and will include a greenhouse displaying hats blooming with a variety of flowers and surrounded by subtle smellscapes that challenge visitors’ olfactory expectations. Designers will include Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hattie Carnegie, Lilly Daché, Hubert de Givenchy, Deirdre Hawken, Stephen Jones, Guy Laroche, Madame Pauline, Mainbocher, Elsa Schiaparelli, Sally Victor and others. The gallery will also feature a coat by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe, planted with oat, rye, and wheat grass that will start out alive and gradually die during the exhibition.

The statement adds that an evening dress with ‘hobble skirt’ by Jeanne Hallée from 1913–14 will be brought to life using the Pepper’s ghost illusion technique, showing a woman in the design slowly evolving into an insect. Widely popularised by couturier Paul Poiret, the hobble skirt was critiqued by French caricaturist Georges Goursat, who likened its wearers to distorted insects due to their hunched posture and limited stride.

Tight around the knees, the garment featured an elongated silhouette with a high, small bust and long draped skirt that narrowed to a point at the hem, forcing its wearer to walk with a clipped, mincing gait, or, to hobble. Hallée’s design epitomises the segmented shape parodied by Goursat, as it features a gilded abdomen extending into a flared peplum over the hips.