Heavenly Bodies at the Met

Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling

This year’s Costume Institute exhibit, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, is the largest to date, spread out in three sites at two museums.  In the basement gallery are vestments on loan from the Vatican.  This is where you see the real deal.  The highest of haute couture has nothing on the Vatican finery where jewels and intricate embroidery weave Catholic lore onto its sacred robes.

Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Top photo Yves Saint Laurent Wedding Ensemble Fall/Winter 1977-78, above detail of a Vatican vestment
Heavenly Bodies

The heart of Heavenly Bodies is artfully staged amongst the art in the Byzantine and medieval galleries on the first floor.  European designers dominate with Jean Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano well represented among others.  Fashion and religion seem like strange bedfellows but iconography and opulence weigh heavily in both.  There was plenty for designers to work with, Madonnas, angels, nuns, priests, and crosses, oh so many crosses.  Though beautiful to look at Catholicism’s imprint on the clothes sometimes veered toward costume design without the sieve of the designer’s own psyche as interpreter. This left me wanting for more.  For that, as I learned, I would have to travel uptown to the Cloisters where the show continues.  But that is for another day.  Until then here are photos taken at the Met, 5th Avenue.

Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
John Galliano for Christian Dior 2000-1
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Sober black and White ensembles by various designers
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Yves Saint Laurent statuary vestment for the Virgin in the chapel of Notre-Dame de Compassion 1950
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Alexander McQueen for Givenchy evening ensemble spring/summer 1999
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Dolce & Gabbana spring/summer 2016
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Riccardo Tisci statuary vestments for The Madonna Delle Grazie 2015
heavenly bodies Prima Darling
Christian Lacroix jacket fall/winter haute couture 1988-89
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
Jean Paul Gaultier spring/summer 2007 haute couture
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
John Galliano for Christian Dior fall/winter 2000-2001 haute couture
Heavenly Bodies Prima Darling
I worship at the altar of this pair of Verdura maltese cross cuffs, center

 Prima Darling