Avery Carter '21
In response to the pandemic and limited capacities in galleries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art produced in-depth videos of their exhibitions. As The MET celebrates its 150th anniversary, the Costume Institute put together an exhibition “About Time: Fashion and Duration.” As time seems more metaphysical than ever and as we struggle to live presently, this exhibition is apropos. Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Costume Institute, says the show is a “meditation on fashion and temporality, drawing out tensions between change and endurance, and ephemerality and persistence.” The exhibit is partly based on the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of duration where “time exists as a continuous flow, and the relationship between the past and the present is one of coexistence, rather than succession” The layout and structure of the exhibition abide by that notion.
The exhibit casts two chronological stories presented as clocks. The viewer moves forward in time from 1870, the year of The MET’s founding, to the present. Each clock has tick marks on it for the number of minutes in an hour, along which two ensembles are placed. The front ensemble represents a chronological timeline, while the back piece relates to the front timeline through technique, style, or appearance. Each piece is in black to put a focus on their interconnection and relationship with one another.
Narrating the exhibit is Virginia Woolf’s writings, read by Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep. At one point, the quote from Woolf’s “Orlando: A Biography” is read aloud: “An hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be and deserves fuller observation.”
While I explored the exhibit, I was struck by two pairings. The first was a piece by Mrs. Arnold, a Brooklyn dressmaker from 1895, which is compared with an ensemble by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garcons in 2004, for similarities in their sleeves.
About Time: Fashion and Duration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
These two designers could not be more different in space and time, yet they find common ground in the technique and style The striking similarity between the two ensembles is extraordinary given the contextual differences.
Another pairing left me with the notion of looking to the past for inspiration and noticing the present-day usage of technology while combining the two. Gabrielle Chanel’s Little Black Dress from 1927 compared with a 2018 dress by Virgil Abloh for Off-White creates an homage to Chanel’s notable piece, while working off of it to create modern fashion.
About Time: Fashion and Duration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The final look is a magnificent piece by Viktor and Rolf for their “Spring 2020 Haute Couture” collection.
About Time: Fashion and Duration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
It is made up of a patchwork of floral lace from past collections creating something new. Bolton says that they “ended the exhibition with the dress because the patchwork design seems to serve as an apt metaphor for the future of fashion and the importance of community, collaboration, and sustainability” (source). The culmination of the final presentation with this masterful work is, I sincerely believe, more than apt. It is a wishful premonition. The past and future are united before our eyes, leaving the viewer with optimism. This meaningful show reminds us how fashion of the past informs our present and how history can help show meaning for, and inspire, the future.
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