April 18, 2019
Camp: Notes of Fashion, the great exhibition of the MET
The first Monday of May, something unique happens: the great MET gala inaugurates the most relevant and influential international fashion exhibition
After the success of Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, the next exhibition at the MET Costume Institute will surely make a great impression. Last year the MET Costume Institute surprised the whole world with its exhibition Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. However, next May 6, the MET will again be overcome with a new sample: Camp: Notes of Fashion.
The exhibition is inspired by the work of Susan Sontag in 1964 in which the influence of camping on culture and society is explored. “The essence of Camp is his love for the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”
The exhibition explores the notion of “camp” from its origins, to try to understand how it has moved from the margins to the dominant culture. The fashion department of the Museum of New York has donated more than 175 works with sculptures, paintings and drawings, dating from the seventeenth century to the present day. The first part of the exhibition examines Versailles, where the term “camping” refers to the way of behaving to impress the King’s court. Then he moves to the dandies, one of the trends of nineteenth-century fashion camps, and inevitably, the queer culture, with its humor and its extravagance.