Even more powerfully, the artist Samar Hejazi has been commissioned to create mirrored heads for the show’s mannequins. “I’ve always wanted to try to bridge the gap between the viewer and the mannequin,” Bolton begins. With a “mannequin where the face is a mirror, you’re looking at yourself. Part of that is to reflect on the lived experience of the bodies you’re looking at, and also to reflect your own lived experience—to facilitate empathy and compassion.” Going a step further, the museum will also be casting real bodies to embody the clothes. “As you go through, [the exhibition] will challenge normative conventions and, in turn, offer more diverse displays of beauty.”
“Costume Art” is the first of Bolton’s exhibitions to be subtitle-less. The simplicity of the show’s name bolsters its objective: that fashion should most certainly be considered on the same plane as art. “I thought very, very carefully about that,” Bolton says. In fact, as recently as two weeks ago, the show did have a colon and a subtitle. “But then we took it out and it was like taking off a corset,” he laughs. “I thought, this is exactly what it should be. It’s bold, it’s strong, it’s a statement of intent.” The goal, he goes on, “is not to create a new hierarchy. It’s just to disband that hierarchy and to focus on equivalency—equivalency of artworks and equivalency of bodies.”
Made possible by Jeff and Lauren Bezos, with other funding from Saint Laurent and Condé Nast, “Costume Art” will run from May 10, 2026–January 10, 2027, following the Met Gala on May 4, 2026, which provides the Costume Institute with its primary source of funding for all activities.
