The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
May 5th – July 16th, 2023
The Costume Institute’s spring 2023 exhibition examines the work of Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). Focusing on the designer’s stylistic vocabulary as expressed in aesthetic themes that appear time and again in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019, the show spotlights the German-born designer’s unique working methodology.
Most of the approximately 150 pieces on display are accompanied by Lagerfeld’s sketches, which underscore his complex creative process and the collaborative relationships with his premières, or head seamstresses. Lagerfeld’s fluid lines united his designs for Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion.
The clothes are certainly the focal point of the muted exhibition, which springs to life via a video projected onto the opening wall that shows Lagerfeld’s fingerless glove-clad hands sketching dresses. Each of the show’s winding, convex rooms are themed according to “Lines” of his work, for instance, “Masculine Line/Feminine Line” and “Romantic Line/Military Line,” demonstrating the duality and layered nature of Lagerfeld’s creative vision.
The first room features some Chanel greats on one side (glittering skirt suits, a gown with a cascading fish scale-like train) and a handful of Fendi furs and textured dresses on the other—a true fashion face-off. Above those dresses, video footage of interviews with seamstresses who worked closest with Lagerfeld in the Chanel atelier; below them, the typical museum placard features an added bonus: the corresponding sketch to go along with the design (if there’s no sketch, then an image of the object which served as inspiration for the look—a plate, a birdcage, or an armoire).
