PHOTOS: Preview The Met Costume Institute’s ‘Punk: Chaos To Couture’ Exhibit

by Hilary George-Parkin | 2:44 pm, February 12th, 2013

The irony of attending an 8AM press preview breakfast at the Metropolitan Museum of Art along with Anna Wintour and a pack of Vogue-ettes to talk Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, and all things punk was not lost on us as we made the trek to the Upper East Side yesterday, but were we complaining? Not a chance.

What we were previewing was, of course, the Costume Institute’s “Punk: Chaos to Couture” exhibition, slated to open to the public May 9 after the annual star-studded gala. About a dozen mannequins were set up in the lobby of the museum, some in the original subversive punk attire of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, and others in modern, high fashion garments inspired by the movement by designers like Chanel‘s Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, and Givenchy‘s Riccardo Tisci, the latter of whom displayed his commitment to his duties as a gala co-chair at yesterday’s event and debuted a brand new moustache while he was at it.

Curator Andrew Bolton walked us through the significance of each outfit and how it will fit into the themes of “Chaos to Couture”. “Rather than looking at punk as an attitude, it will look at it as an aesthetic,” he said, drawing our attention to the concepts of hardware, deconstruction, and bricolage displayed on each mannequin. One dress, from Moschino‘s spring 1994 collection, he used as evidence of the idea that “fashion, quite literally, is trash.” Of course, it was made entirely of shiny black garbage bags.

See photos from the preview and images that inspired the exhibition in the gallery below: