2008 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News Archives

Superman Costume

February 25, 2008: Metropolitan Museum Salutes Superhero Fashion

Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Salutes Power of "Superheroes" Imagery in Fashion

Gala Benefit May 5, 2008, with Honorary Chair Giorgio Armani and Co-Chairs George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Anna Wintour

Exhibition dates: May 7-September 1, 2008

Exhibition location: Special exhibition galleries, first floor

Press preview: Monday, May 5, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

As superheroes enjoy a surge in mass popularity not seen since the golden age of comic books in the 1940s, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will explore the symbolic and metaphorical associations between these fictional characters and fashion in Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, an exhibition at the Museum from May 7 through September 1, 2008. The exhibition will feature approximately 60 ensembles including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear to reveal how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body.

The exhibition, in the Museum's first-floor special exhibition galleries, will include movie costumes as well as radical fashions that literally and figuratively reference superhero iconography, including Bernhard Willhelm's 2006 royal blue dress emblazoned with a red-and-yellow "S" emblem, a 1996 Walter van Beirendonck pink vinyl inflatable jacket, and a Thierry Mugler motorcycle bustier with polychrome handlebars and side-view mirrors. A long leather Balenciaga jacket with articulated bronze leggings evokes Iron Man's metallic skin, while a Jean Paul Gaultier second-skin bodysuit shares the Flash's streamlined aerodynamics.

Read the complete press release at metmuseum.org.



2008 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News

Listed below are all the Merchandise & Miscellaneous News items archived for 2008.


Back to the News Archive Contents page.

Back to the Latest News page.