“I wear Cardinal Chanel”. These are the words of Anna Wintour, in her ethereal white dress designed by Lagerfeld. On the threshold of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the hostess welcomes a crowd of celebrities with haloes full of stars, and long hair echoing Mary Magdalene’s mane. The theme of the celestial creatures, recalling both the grace of angelic beings and the statuariety of votive sculptures, is the main focus of the new costume exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”, which seems to be a real self-proclamation for fashion.
Fashion is a religion, in all respects. With its ecclesiastical hierarchy of models in Christian cassocks, a procession of designers has covered their muses with angel wings and virginal crosses throughout history, with the Met Gala 2018 being no exception. Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Costume Institute since 2015, has gathered an archive of majestic dresses and accessories for the MET’s new exhibition, working alongside the steadfast Wintour and a Donatella Versace diving into her own official investiture as co-host of the Gala event. From the creations of Riccardo Tisci and his “Madonna delle Grazie”, to Versace encrusted with colorful crystal crosses, Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda pieces, to the clothes of the Vatican tradition; the trio’s exhibition gave life to a real and visual dialogue between fashion and religion.
The annual Gala honouring the opening of the exhibition was a triumph. The eye was inevitably caught by the papal Rihanna, in a Maison Margiela Artisanal dress, covered with white pearls and with a papal miter on her head, wearing, moreover, a clutch with a crystal cross in memoriam to the great Judith Leiber, recently passed away. Amongst others, Sarah Jessica Parker looked like a Byzantine Madonna, covered in the melted gold of her Dolce & Gabbana dress, with a coordinated headdress inspired by a Neapolitan devotee sacred image. A more obscure virgin is the one represented by Lily Collins, in a monastic and refined Givenchy dress, with a black halo and a painted bloody tear.
Then one gets to the eccentricity of Cardi B in Moschino and to that of Katy Perry, in a Versace dress with massive golden wings, and Blake Lively, with a Versace Atelier gown which took 600 hours to be realized. Lana del Rey could not be missed, in a splendid ivory-colored Gucci, with blue-feather headdress, inspired by the lapis lazzuli – colored Italian frescos, and swords stuck in the chest, specifically the bronze heart of the Madonna Dolorosa, a suffering Virgin Mary pierced with the pain for the loss of her son. Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele flanked del Rey on the evening. Michelle’s designs worn by Del Rey and Jared Leto were filled with hagiographic references, with Del Rey’s accessories even homaging Saint Lucy with the saint’s iconic bodiless eyes enameled on a lorgnette.
The power of this exhibition, and of the gala itself, is to highlight a new frontier – “Fashion Devotion”, a phrase coined by Dolce & Gabbana’s Ready to Wear Fall 2018 Collection. The aim is to make people understand the absolute importance of fashion not only as a phenomenon of custom, but as a real anthropological study of thought, society, and evolution. Fashion reflects the changing world and in the words of Cardinal Ravasi, the Italian prelate who provided the exhibition’s access to the Vatican archives, “God was the first tailor”.
Man is made to be dressed. The body is a canvas made to be adorned with a thousand colors and textures. Nudity is almost a step backward in this world, an abandonment of civilization, while the dress is the triumph of creation, a reminder humanity’s ousting from Eden. Among the angels, Madonnas and modern takes on Joan of Arc, the Met Gala 2018 is an empyrean of beauty and luxury. The show promises to reaffirm the talent of Andrew Bolton, started with the retrospective “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” (2011) and confirmed with “China: Through the Looking Glass” (2015), proving another great and triumphant success to add his repertoire.
View some of our choice looks from the evening:
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