Couture's creepy corridors

If one is spending a summer in New York, any summer in New York, an absolute must-do is to spend an afternoon at the city’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the edge of Central Park, just gawking in gobsmacked awe at the annual fashion exhibition the museum’s Costume Institute puts together.

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

The museum does this with a massive fundraiser under the aegis of the fashion world’s queen bee Anna Wintour, and her snobby Conde Nast stable. Wintour and the media company ensure the who’s who of international celebrities attend the gala, from Rihanna to Roger Federer.

I was lucky to catch the exhibit in its last week. The title, ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’, made no sense to me at all since its themes are usually quite specific. It is Christian art in fashion one year, Karl Lagerfeld the year he had passed, camp and queer fashion, China and oriental fashions, and such. I did not understand this year’s title until I actually saw the show.