Manus x Machina

Wednesday, July 6, 2016



Photo Via The Met

Every year there is a fantastic fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum following the Met Ball (the first Monday in May) and every year I say I am going to go see the exhibit and unfortunately every year I miss it. Well this year I made a point to make it to the Met to see the Manus x Machina exhibit and if you are in NY from now until August 14th you need to put it on your itinerary. 









A little about the exhibit from the Met website:


The Costume Institute's spring 2016 exhibition explores how fashion designers are reconciling the handmade and the machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear.
With more than 170 ensembles dating from the early 20th century to the present, the exhibition addresses the founding of the haute couture in the 19th century, when the sewing machine was invented, and the emergence of a distinction between the hand (manus) and the machine (machina) at the onset of mass production. It explores this ongoing dichotomy, in which hand and machine are presented as discordant tools in the creative process, and questions the relationship and distinction between haute couture and ready-to-wear.
The Robert Lehman Wing galleries, on the Museum's first floor and ground level, have been transformed into a building-within-a-building using white scrims. The space houses a series of case studies in which haute couture and ready-to-wear ensembles are decoded to reveal their hand/machine DNA. A 2014 haute couture wedding dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel with a 20-foot train occupies a central cocoon, with details of its embroidery projected onto the domed ceiling. The scuba knit ensemble, one of the inspirations for the exhibition, stands as a superlative example of the confluence between the handmade and the machine-made–the pattern on the train was hand-painted with gold metallic pigment, machine-printed with rhinestones, and hand-embroidered with pearls and gemstones.






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