Women Dressing Women

The Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute celebrates women designers

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No doubt, the Met Gala has produced

unforgettable moments for female designers, like Go Pei’s sunny “omelette dress” worn by Rhianna, as well as the beaded black blazer conceived and sported by Stella McCartney. However, the big event is much more than a big event. It’s an important fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which can trace its origins to sisters Irene and Alice Lewisohon, who in 1915 established it as a closet of historical costumes for the Neighborhood Playhouse, one of New York’s first off-Broadway theaters. The collection grew so large and important that it formally became the Museum of Costume Art and later merged with the big mommy, the Met. Financially independent, it encompasses clothing and accessories to house “all epochs and all people... artists, art historians, craftsmen, and students of all kinds." While the Gala may not be open to many of us, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is, and Women Dressing Women is a matter of walking through the doors, or at least, getting a peek here. Conceived in conjunction with the centennial of the women’s suffrage centennial but detoured due to COVID, it now stands as a tribute all its own, where the collection illustrates the history of Western women’s fashion up to current designers. The late Cuban designer Isabel Toledo studied at the Institute, calling it “the place... where it became clear to me that fashion is, indeed, an art form.”