Next year’s annual Met Gala theme has been announced and you’re going to want to listen up because it’s a very good one. On the first Monday of May, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute will honor the life and work of the late iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.
The upcoming exhibition is titled “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” and was announced Friday morning in Paris by co-chair Anna Wintour and the institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton at Lagerfeld’s former studio and library, the 7L bookshop.
They were joined by Lagerfeld’s former colleagues, including senior executives from Chanel, Fendi, and the Karl Lagerfeld label, current Chanel creative director Virginie Viard, and Silvia Fendi. Chanel muse Pharrell Williams was also in attendance.
According to an official statement acquired by CNN, the presentation will consist of 150 designs that “explore the designer’s stylistic language.” The exhibition will include sketches and designs from Lagerfeld’s tenure as creative director of Fendi, Chloé and Chanel, along with creations from his time at Balmain, Patou, and pieces from his namesake label, encompassing his six-decade career which lasted until his death at the age of 85 in 2019.
Ironically, Lagerfeld may not have liked that his clothes would be shown in a museum. According to Vogue, Bolton said, “When we worked on the Chanel show together he was incredibly generous in what he lent, but he was completely disinterested in the exhibition itself! He would say ‘fashion is not art—fashion belongs on the street, on women’s bodies, on men’s bodies.’”
The chief costume curator, who is also penning an accompanying book on the designer, told CNN that Lagerfeld “would have hated a retrospective,” but that the showcase will be laid out like an “essay” on his inimitable career.
Bolton will also receive a helping hand from Amanda Harlech, who previously worked alongside the couturier, as she comes on board as the exhibit’s creative consultant.
In 1954, the wunderkind kicked off his career, winning the esteemed Woolmark Prize in a tie with fellow up-and-comer Yves Saint Laurent. Lagerfeld went on to become Pierre Balmain’s assistant just a year later, before taking the reins as art director at Parisian fashion house Jean Patou. Later, Lagerfeld would go on to helm Chloé, take on a life-long partnership at Italian fashion house Fendi in 1965, before eventually becoming the chief artistic director at Chanel.
The highly anticipated exhibit will be on display beginning May 5, following the Met Gala on May 1, 2023.
Every year since 1948, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute hosts fashion’s biggest night. The exclusive guest list gathers Hollywood’s brightest stars with fashion’s most legendary figures to celebrate the latest Costume Institute exhibit and raise museum funds, as they dress to nines in theme-appropriate looks or in rule book-defying ensembles.
This year, the exhibit In America: An Anthology of Fashion was accompanied by a “gilded glamour” Gala theme. While the theme is typically more ambiguous and open to interpretation, individual designers have been honored in the past, including Rei Kawakubo/ Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between in 2017, Charles James: Beyond Fashion, 2012’s Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations in 2014, and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, 2007’s Poiret: King of Fashion in 2011, to name a few.
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