The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion for Spring 2009

The spring 2009 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, it was announced by the Museum today.

The exhibition, which will be on view at the Metropolitan from May 6 through August 9, 2009, will explore the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty, and will focus on iconic fashion models of the 20th century and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras.

"The exhibition will examine a timeline of fashion over the past 100 years through the paradigm of the fashion model," said Harold Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute.

"We look at the power of clothing, fashion photography, and the model to project the look of an era.

With a mere gesture, or the line of her body, a truly stellar model can sum up the attitude of her time, creating an alluring synergy between herself and the clothing to communicate a designer's message to the wider world."

The exhibition will feature approximately 70 masterworks of haute couture and ready-to-wear.

Fashion editorial, advertising, and runway photography plus video footage of models, actresses, socialites, and rock stars who epitomize their epochs will be used throughout the galleries to explicate the fashion zeitgeist.