The Met

Scene: The Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons and Irving Penn exhibits at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Costume Institute’s Spring 2017 exhibition examined the work of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, known for her avant-garde designs and ability to challenge conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and fashionability. The thematic show features approximately 140 examples of Kawakubo’s womenswear for Comme des Garçons dating from the early 1980s to her most recent collection. The galleries illustrate the designer’s revolutionary experiments in “in-betweenness”— the space between boundaries. Heads and wigs were created and styled by Julien d’Ys. View the video of the show.

Viewers view the art as I view the viewers and the art.

Scene: Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons, Cubisme, Spring/Summer 2007 collection. Vest in navy wool-polyester gabardine and red polyester chiffon; skirt of red nylon tulle. Background, Jacket of red nylon tulle with panels of off-white wool-polyester voltaire printed red and black; skirt of white nylon tulle and red rayon flocking.

Scene: Other galleries and exhibits on the way to the Irving Penn show.

Scene: Irving Penn, Mouth, New York 1986, Dye transfer print. Ad for L’Oreal.

The Met presented a major retrospective of the photographs of Irving Penn to mark the centennial of the artist’s birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Irving Penn (1917–2009) mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, detail, and printmaking. It was the most comprehensive exhibition of the great American photographer’s work to date. Penn was first and foremost a fashion photographer. He dealt with many subjects throughout his long career. The exhibition explored the chapters of his work. View the video.