What Makes Fashion Campy? See the Wild, Strange Looks That Define the Style in Met’s New Costume Institute Exhibition
- 2019-05-10
- Art Net News
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest Costume Institute exhibition is organized around an idea that’s difficult to define: camp. Indeed, as the museum’s director, Max Hollein, noted in his remarks at the opening preview, the word itself is manifested in every possible part of speech. It’s a noun, a verb, an adjective—and even a sensibility.
The second part of the exhibition is the more successful one, stuffing as many colors, textures, and fashion designers into a dramatically lit black-box room as possible, with ensembles illuminated by fluorescent colors in distinct vitrines, each costumes with own story of camp.
At the press preview for the show, the esteemed chief curator of the Costume Institute, Andrew Bolton, closed his remarks with the words of one historian who wrote: “camp is like trying to sit in the corner of a circular room”—something that would be near impossible, especially with a feathered headdress, hoopskirts, and sky-high platform shoes.