These days we're busy shaking out our sequinned tops and velvet skirts for Christmas, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art is deep into preparing for next year's Met Gala just a mere six months away, and today announced the theme for its glamorous ball.
The next Costume Institute exhibition will be titled "Costume Art", and will celebrate the close relationship between fashion and fine art.
Opening to the public on 10 May 2026 and running until 10 January 2027, the exhibition will draw parallels between the two worlds of art and fashion by showcasing almost 200 artworks and pairing them with around 200 garments and accessories.
Although the Met Gala itself - which takes place on 4 May 2026 - will have its own dress code, which is yet to be announced, the exhibition theme will inform the dress code and no doubt serve as inspiration for the A-list guests set to walk the iconic steps of the Met.
Speaking to Vogue Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the exhibition, said: "What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body.
"It's the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was, this epiphany: I know that we’ve often been seen as the stepchild, but, in fact, the dressed body is front and center in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked. It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas."
More than that, the exhibition will make the case of fashion as art, not just linked to it. As Bolton says: "Fashion's acceptance as an art form has really occurred on art’s terms," he explains. "It’s premised on the negation, on the renunciation, of the body, and on the [fact that] aesthetics are about disembodied and disinterested contemplation."
Bolton's vision for the exhibition revolves around the concept of body types, divided into three categories: bodies that are present in art, such as the nude body; bodies that are more typically overlooked, such as elderly bodies and pregnant bodies; and the 'universal' body like the anatomical body.
In this sense, we can possibly expect looks drawing attention to the body, from sculptural creations by Schiaparelli and Commes des Garcons that enhance and distort our forms, to 'naked' dresses.
The event sponsors will be the French luxury label Saint Laurent, along with Condé Nast and Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
The exhibition will also mark the inauguration of the nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, adjacent to The Met's Great Hall.
