The Metropolitan Museum's Sleeping Beauties Exhibition Book Makes the Perfect Gift for Fashion Lovers

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The 2024 Met Gala celebrates the Costume Institute's exhibition, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion." For fashion fans, there's no better gift than the book that accompanies the exhibit, published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

Per the Museum, "This vibrant publication brings to life four centuries of extraordinary garments and accessories inspired by the natural world. Offering new ways for understanding and experiencing a garment's inherent artistry, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion explores clothing's complex relationship with the body through the senses."

The book features texts by scholars, scientists, and conservators, who "reveal the history behind over 200 works of fashion while also addressing their fragility and ephemerality." The publication also includes photography by Nick Knight "of creations by international couturiers and design houses – including Cristòbal Balenciaga, Thom Browne, Collina Strada, Christian Dior, Gucci, Charles James, Loewe, Madame Grès, Thebe Magugu, Maison Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Bea Szenfeld, Philip Treacy, Iris van Herpen, Louis Vuitton, and Charles Frederick Worth."

On his Instagram, photographer Nick Knight, who also served as a creative consultant for the show, posted an animated version of the cover, which also features as a teaser for the upcoming exhibition:

"The Met's innovative spring 2024 Costume Institute exhibition will push the boundaries of our imagination and invite us to experience the multisensory facets of a garment—those facets that deteriorate and become lost after entering a museum collection as an object," Max Hollein, the museum's CEO, said in a statmenet. Sleeping Beauties will heighten our engagement with these masterpieces of fashion by evoking what it was like to feel, move, hear, smell, and interact with them when they could be worn, ultimately offering a deeper appreciation of the integrity, beauty, and artistic brilliance of the works on display."

Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion will be on view at the Met from May 10 through September 2, 2024.

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