New York — One of the first sights we see in “The Art of Fashion,” the new fashion exhibition launching at the Met Gala on Monday, is a sparkling column dress by Dolce And Gabbana, with its shimmering gold sequins surrounding the image of Aphrodite.
The Greek goddess stands on a pedestal, holding a golden apple given to her for her beauty – a classic example of beauty as old as ancient Greece.
But the idea of “fashion art,” which examines the clothed body across centuries of art history, is not intended to celebrate the classical form. It’s best to use this model as a starting point, says Andrew Bolton, a longtime curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Now, we go through and retrieve the body,” he says as he leads a reporter through the shiny new Conde M. Nast showrooms the show will open.
Fat body. Disabled body. Pregnant body. Aging of the body. The new display, which gala guests will see before it opens to the public on May 10, is the most body-positivity-conscious display the museum has attempted. Perhaps its most notable feature is a group of new models, based on real people with a wide range of body types.
There’s even, in the “aging body” section, an oversized gray blazer, emblazoned with the phrase: “I’m retired. (This is what I wear the way I dress.)” just in case you’re tired of all the glitter.
The designs are on display at the Metropolitan Institute of Art’s fashion exhibition, “The Art of Fashion,” on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in New York.
Photography by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Bolton took The Associated Press on a tour of the exhibit late last week, where a massive team of installers was busy hammering, installing and modifying the 400 items on display. Here are some highlights.
A new space that gives fashion its due
Last year, the Met Gala, a fundraiser for the Costume Institute, brought in a record $31 million. That huge sum alone — which grows every year — could explain why the museum has given its only self-financing department some notable new digs, fashioned out of former retail spaces on the museum’s main floor, just off the Great Hall. “We’re in the center of the museum,” Bolton says with evident pride. It will house all future fashion exhibitions, making them easier for guests to access and enabling the shows to run longer. “The Art of Fashion” will last for 8 months.
Universality…diversity
The show travels through centuries of art history by associating art objects with fashion clothing, making the argument that art is not only the art of fashion – it is, in fact, the ceremonial dress code – but more deeply, art is fashion. Her first major exhibition is titled “The Bodily Being in Its Diversity,” and begins with flowing gowns in the Greek style, paired with images on Greek vases or amphorae. But the show soon deviates from classic shapes to those that fashion has traditionally ignored.
The pregnant woman’s body is not hidden
Bolton says the pregnant body has been overlooked or stereotyped in art. Here, he presents designers—often female, working in the late twentieth century or later—who explored and accentuated the expected form. The so-called “maternity dress” by British designer Georgina Godley, which appeared in her 1986 “Bump and Lump” collection, is a straightforward celebration of a pregnant woman’s expanding belly. It is paired with a rare (at the time) sculpture from 1920 by French artist Edgar Degas, “The Pregnant Woman” – a nude figure clutching her stomach and appearing to contemplate what is to come.
The fat body, without restrictions
The clothes shown here include corset designer Michaela Stark, who posed as three of the new models. One showcases the “fat, not fertile” collection of corsets – combatting the trope that a larger body represents reproduction and fertility. Stark uses corsets to bind and highlight the body, not hide it – in order to “bring power back to the female form.” The set is paired with an ancient marble statuette that resembles the same body type.
The disabled body takes center stage
A fascinating subset of the “Reclaimed Body” section explores the disabled body, which itself is divided into different types of disability: physical, sensory and cognitive.
In one collection, a model inspired by Paralympic athlete, model and actor Amy Mullins wears a pair of Victorian-style Alexander McQueen shoes, which are actually prosthetics. The costume was paired with a 1965 sculpture titled “The Amputee” by artist John Gottman.
Irish disability activist Sinead Burke, who was born with dwarfism, also posed for two models. One wears a Burberry coat, cut to length – including part of the discarded sleeve, which has been reshaped into a hood. The other is a Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren “Mickey and Minnie” dress, paired with an ancient Egyptian statue of a dancing dwarf.
Model and activist Ariana Rose Phillippe, who uses a wheelchair, also posed in front of a model positioned in her own chair – wearing denim shorts and a “Queer Capital” T-shirt. The show is accompanied by a work by artist Lucy Jones, who, like Philip, suffers from cerebral palsy.
Exploring a less visible disability is a coat by Scottish designer Nadia Pinckney, who in her Remember Me Knot collection paid tribute to both her grandmother and great-grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. The coat pattern – derived, according to the curators, from brain scans – is intended to reflect the “physiological entanglement” that the disease inflicts on the brain’s structure.
It is paired with a lithograph by Willem de Kooning, whose own experience with Alzheimer’s disease influenced his late-career work.
The vital body is colorful and bloody
The second major exhibition is not so much dedicated to diversity as to commonalities – those things that unite us all. Such as aging, which the series seeks to reframe as “a pattern of development rather than biological decline.” And deaths. There’s also a whole hematology section on blood.
This includes Westwood’s “Martyr to Love” evening jacket in which the bright beads represent a muscular torso, and the deep red beads depict blood dripping from a wound. It is associated with the painting “Man of Sorrows with Outstretched Arms” by German painter Albrecht Dürer.
The “Art of Fashion” exhibition opens to the public on May 10 and runs until January 10, 2027.
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