After Alexander McQueen last year, The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses the italian designers Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) and Muccia Prada (1949). The exhibit will be on display until August 19.
Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's Impossible interviews for Vanity Fair in the 1930s and based on connections and similarities between these amazing women, Schiaparelli and Prada: impossible conversations, explores their most remarkable aesthetic parallels. Actually, despite the fact that these powerfull and hypnotic personalities never met, they explored similar ideas in their intrepid and exceptional universes, having so much to say one to another. In this sense, and suggesting new readings of their most innovative work, the film director Baz Luhrmann has created a set of videos as part of the event. They are about imaginary conversations between Elsa and Muccia, focusing on how both women approached their works through very different semblances, using fashion as a vehicle to confront social conventions of beauty.
The Met's Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, designed by Nathan Crawley and curated by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, showcases emblematic outfits and signature accessories by both designers arranged in seven themed galleries: Waist Up/Waist Down, Ugly Chic, Hard Chic, Naïf Chic, The Classical Body, The Exotic Body and The Surreal Body. A lifetime exhibition, highly recommended for anyone interested in fashion and art. Don’t miss it!
