Celebrated tonight at the Met Gala will be the opening of the Costume Institute’s exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” curated by the Institute’s Andrew Bolton.
In a space designed by world-renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who first met Lagerfeld in 1996, the show spotlights Lagerfeld’s unique “stylistic vocabulary as it was expressed in ‘through lines’ — aesthetic and conceptual themes that appear time and again — in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019,” according to a news release.
With more than 200 objects on display — some paired with Lagerfeld’s original sketches — the exhibition highlights the designer’s creative process and collaborative relationships with “seamstresses regarded as the architects of Lagerfeld’s vision,” according to the news release. Introductory galleries explore the early chapters of Lagerfeld’s career, during which he designed and worked for the French fashion houses of Pierre Balmain and Patou, respectively. Video interviews conducted by French filmmaker Loïc Prigent, who documented the designer’s work from 1997 to 2019, include footage of Lagerfeld’s collections from Chanel, Chloé, Fendi and his eponymous label.
Subsequent sections of the exhibition showcase “the serpentine line and the straight line, which designate opposing yet complementary forces in his work,” according to the news release. “The serpentine line signifies Lagerfeld’s historicist, romantic, and decorative impulses, while the straight line indicates his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies.”
The final gallery, designed like an ellipse, features never-before-seen archival footage of Lagerfeld displayed across 81 iPhones, “a nod to the designer’s primary mode of creativity and communication,” according to the news release.
The exhibition will be open for public viewing May 5 through July 16, 2023.
