Metropolitan Museum to Feature Punk Fashion in Spring 2013 Costume Institute Exhibition

The spring 2013 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be PUNK: Chaos to Couture. The exhibition, on view from May 9 through August 14, 2013 (preceded on May 6 by The Costume Institute Benefit), will examine punk's impact on high fashion from the movement's birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence today.

The exhibition is made possible by Moda Operandi.

Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.

"Punk's signature mixing of references was fueled by artistic developments such as Dada and postmodernism," said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "so it makes sense to present this exhibition in a museum that also shows the broader output of those movements. Indeed, that dialogue between art and fashion is what makes The Costume Institute so singular. Projects like this don't happen without sponsorship, and we greatly appreciate the generosity of Moda Operandi, and its co-founders Aslaug Magnusdottir and Lauren Santo Domingo."

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 6, 2013. The evening's Co-Chairs will be Academy Award© nominated actress Rooney Mara; Lauren Santo Domingo, Co-Founder of Moda Operandi; Riccardo Tisci, Creative Director of Givenchy; and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. This fundraising event is The Costume Institute's main source of annual funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

"Since its origins, punk has had an incendiary influence on fashion," said Andrew Bolton, Curator in The Costume Institute. "Although punk's democracy stands in opposition to fashion's autocracy, designers continue to appropriate punk's aesthetic vocabulary to capture its youthful rebelliousness and aggressive forcefulness."

Exhibition Overview
The exhibition, in the Museum's second-floor Cantor galleries, will feature approximately 100 designs for men and women. Original punk garments from the mid-1970s will be juxtaposed with recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk's visual symbols, with paillettes being replaced with safety pins, feathers with razor blades, and bugle beads with studs. Focusing on the relationship between the punk concept of 'do-it-yourself' and the couture concept of 'made-to-measure,' the exhibition will be organized around the materials, techniques, and embellishments associated with the anti-establishment style. Presented as an immersive multimedia, multisensory experience, the clothes will be animated with period music videos and soundscaping audio techniques.

Organized thematically, each of the seven galleries will have designated punk 'heroes' who embody the broader concepts behind the fashions on view. The first gallery will be devoted to CBGB in New York City, represented by Richard Hell. Next will be a gallery inspired by Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood and their Seditionaries boutique at 430 King's Road in London. The Clothes for Heroes gallery, embodied by Jordan, will examine designers who extend the visual language of punk, as it was originally articulated by McLaren and Westwood, by merging social realism with artistic expression.