The Costume Institute Ball at The Metropolitan Museum of Art took place on Monday night with a veritable who’s who of the fashion world. The Met Ball is to New York what the Oscars is to Los Angeles…with a red carpet that’s even more to die for.
The crowd was packed with everyone from single name A-Listers a la Madonna, Beyonce the Olsen’s etc to the top taster makers in the industry from Vogue’s Anna Wintour to Sarah Burton from Alexander McQueen.
Sadly McQueen himself will never know the honors that have been bestowed upon him in the last week from the Royal Wedding dresses that the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middelton wore to the tribute in his honor on Monday night
The theme was decidedly Scottish from the bagpipers perched in the entrance to the Verdant garden décor inside. From WWD The mood was celebratory as guests focused on McQueen’s immense creativity, discussing how the designer transcended fashion and turned clothes into art perfect for a museum. “I was really just impressed with his genius, his beautiful insanity. He really saw women in such a different way,” Giselle Bündchen said.
When asked what McQueen himself would have felt about all the fuss, Philip Treacy, one of the designer’s longtime friends, said, “He wouldn’t have come.”
The retrospective collection at the Met included 100 pieces from McQueen’s archives in London and the Paris archives of Givenchy along with cherished pieces from late Isabella Blow’s wardrobe (McQueen’s best friend, muse and the one he credits with much of his success), which Daphne Guinness bought in 2010 and loaned to the museum.
From WWD
The powerful opening leads to a stylized recreation of McQueen’s first atelier in London’s Hoxton neighborhood. Here, the famous bumster trousers and skirts are featured along with pieces from his “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims” graduation collection including a silk satin jacket lined with red silk and human hair. A gallery called “Cabinet of Curiosities” showcases Philip Treacy headdresses and Shaun Leane jewels alongside looks such as a golden, armorlike dress from the designer’s days at Givenchy, a molded plastic bodice laced with realistic-looking worms, and the hand-carved prosthetic legs Aimee Mullins wore for the spring 1999 “No.13” show. “In a way, it’s the soul of this show,” Bolton said of this gallery. “The curious pieces show Lee’s more provocative and confrontational side. You also see his love of craft, and how he advanced fashion by embracing complex ideas.”
The “Romantic Nationalism” gallery juxtaposes tartan looks from the fall 1995 “Highland Rape” with those from “Widows of Culloden” for fall 2006.
The show ends with a lineup from “Plato’s Atlantis,” McQueen’s last complete collection, which touched on “the devolution of mankind rather than the evolution,” Bolton said. “I wanted to end with this because I feel that it brings everything together. It was the balance of craftsmanship and conceptualism, which is what McQueen was about.”
Stop back tomorrow to see the Best Dressed attendees at the Met Ball
