Ensemble by Zandra Rhodes (British, born 1940), 1977. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith for Zandra Rhodes Archive.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that the spring 2013 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute will be PUNK: Chaos to Couture. The exhibition, which will be on view from May 9 through August 11, 2013 (preceded on May 6 by The Costume Institute Benefit), will examine punk’s impact from its birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence on high fashion today.
“Punk’s signature mixing of references was fueled by artistic developments such as Dada and postmodernism,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “so it makes sense to present this exhibition in a Museum that also shows the broader output of those movements. Indeed, that dialogue between art and fashion is what makes The Costume Institute so singular. Projects like this don’t happen without sponsorship, and we greatly appreciate the generosity of Moda Operandi, and its co-founders Aslaug Magnusdottir and Lauren Santo Domingo.”
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum’s Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 6, 2013. The evening’s Co-Chairs will be Academy Award© nominated actress Rooney Mara; Lauren Santo Domingo; Riccardo Tisci, Creative Director of Givenchy; and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. This fundraising event is The Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements.
“Since its origins, punk has had an incendiary influence on fashion,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in The Costume Institute. “Although punk’s democracy stands in opposition to fashion’s autocracy, designers continue to appropriate punk’s aesthetic vocabulary to capture its youthful rebelliousness and aggressive forcefulness.”
Exhibition Overview
The exhibition, in the Museum’s second-floor Cantor galleries, will feature approximately 100 designs for men and women. Original punk garments from the mid-1970s will be juxtaposed with recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk’s visual symbols, with paillettes being replaced with safety pins, feathers with razor blades, and bugle beads with studs. Focusing on the relationship between the punk concept of ‘do-it-yourself’ and the couture concept of ‘made-to-measure,’ the exhibition will be organized around the materials, techniques, and embellishments associated with the anti-establishment style. Presented as an immersive multimedia, multisensory experience, the clothes will be animated with period music videos and soundscaping audio techniques.
Organized thematically, gallery sections will include Rebel Heroes, which will evoke the New York and London music scenes of the mid-1970s, focusing on iconic punk bands such as The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash. The Couturiers Situationists gallery will examine Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s visual codification of punk through the merging of social realism and artistic expression, featuring fashion and graphics they produced for their boutique at 430 King’s Road in London, including Let it Rock, SEX, and Seditionaries.
Pavilions of Anarchy and Elegance will juxtapose punk designs with haute couture creations, focusing on customization and hand craftsmanship. Punk Couture will explore high fashion’s engagement with punk hardware such as studs, spikes, chains, zippers, padlocks, safety pins, and razor blades. D.I.Y. Style will highlight the impact of punk’s bricolage ethos on high fashion, including the use of recycled materials from trash culture. La Mode Destroy will examine the effect of punk’s rip-it-to-shreds attitude via torn and shredded garments associated with deconstructionist fashions.
Designers in the exhibition will include Haider Ackermann, Miguel Adrover, Azzedine Alaïa, Christopher Bailey (Burberry), Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby (Boudicca), Thom Browne, Hussein Chalayan, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Christophe Decarnin (Balmain), Ann Demeulemeester, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (Dolce and Gabbana), Shelley Fox, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Nicolas Ghesquière (Balenciaga), Andrew Groves, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (Viktor & Rolf), Marc Jacobs, Christopher Kane, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons), Karl Lagerfeld (Chanel), Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Kate and Laura Mulleavy (Rodarte), Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Zandra Rhodes, Russell Sage, Jeremy Scott, Stephen Sprouse, Anna Sui, Jun Takahashi (Undercover), Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi (Preen), Riccardo Tisci (Givenchy), An Vandevorst and Filip Arickx (A.F. Vandevorst), Gianni Versace, Alexander Wang, Junya Watanabe, Yohji Yamamoto, and Vivienne Westwood.
The exhibition is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator, in the Met’s Costume Institute. Photographer Nick Knight will be the exhibition’s creative consultant. The design for the 2013 Costume Institute Gala Benefit will be created by Nick Knight with Raul Avila, who has produced the Benefit décor since 2007.
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
