Cappuccino Thoughts 75: On How Fashion Ruined the Met
I went to the new costume exhibit so you don't have to
There’s a difference between looking and seeing.
Let me set the scene. It’s 10:30am on Memorial Day. The weather is overcast. Rain is expected. The Upper East Side is dead quiet as all its inhabitants have flocked to the Hamptons or Nantucket for the first weekend of the season. As one of the urban dwellers stuck in the city this weekend, I make my way to the Met’s new costume exhibit, Sleeping Beauties.
I’ve learned from previous years with blockbuster exhibits to go straight to the signs displaying a QR code to put myself in the virtual queue. The queue to enter the costume exhibit is already 2.5 hours long, just moments after the museum has opened. What is this, Via Carota?
The QR code is a new and highly unwelcome addition to this writer. You have to go to the museum to scan the code and then wait at the museum. I remember seeing it for the first time at the Karl Lagerfeld show last year, then again for Van Gogh’s Cypresses. I tried to see that show four different times and was met with a 2+ hour wait every time, often extending past closing time, before my friend finally photoshopped a text saying it was our turn during closing weekend (I do not favor dishonesty, but I was desperate to see that show!).
The Met is quick to tout the success of these exhibits. Previous costume exhibits like Heavenly Bodies and Camp attracted 1.5 million+ visitors. But it’s too much for the museum to manage.
I remember visiting the 2015 show China Through the Looking Glass and feeling like a whole new world had opened up to me of Chinese designers and style codes. I learned about the cultural impact Chinese designs had on designers like Paul Poiret and Yves Saint Laurent. It felt like an exhibit built to educate, not entertain.
I had the chance to introduce the president of the Met last year for a talk about his book Why the Museum Matters and he touted their record-breaking attendance numbers. You will likely argue that it’s a good thing to have more people at museums. That we need attendees so these institutions don’t die. That people should see the cultural artifacts that make up our collective inheritance as humans.
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But all I saw that day at the Met was annoyance.
These blockbuster exhibits don’t draw more people in to the halo of the Met’s offerings. One of the ideas behind the virtual queue is surely that people will go out and take advantage of the rest of the museum. But mostly, I saw a lot of impatient visitors sitting sentry on their phones, waiting for the minutes to tick down.
Museum exhibits should be about the quality of the experience and not just the quantity of visitors. What’s the value in mindless walking through an exhibit mediated by your phone?
Once I finally got into the exhibit, I watched as nearly everyone just took pictures of the most colorful dresses and moved on. The exhibit was actually quite empty inside because most people moved through it so swiftly, only stopping at the gimmicks like 3D video recreations of the dresses and scratch and sniff walls. (What this had to do with 18th and 19th century dresses, I don’t understand.)
The Met Gala has devolved from a private event for donors and designers into a costume party where people try to outdo each other for likes. The exhibit experience reflects that. The institution seems so focused on getting people in the door that it disregards the impact of the crowds on the museum-going experience and has built the exhibit to cater to a crowd more interested in looking at their phones than to the visitors who genuinely want to see dresses that shaped the history of fashion.
A final point. This year’s exhibit was sponsored by one fashion brand and by TikTok. Naturally.
City Girl Summer
It seems like New Yorkers are of two minds. There are those who escape the city as soon as temperatures teeter above 75. And those who relish summer in the city.
For the latter group, I pulled together a list of some summer activities I’m looking forward to:
-French Films on the Green, a film festival hosted by the French Embassy
-New Broadway shows including Stereophonic, Once Upon a Mattress, and Illinoise
-Visiting Storm King, the outdoor museum an hour away on the Amtrak
-Returning to Coney Island
-American Ballet Theater’s new season
-Musical Mondays at the Angelika
-Yoga at Elizabeth Street Garden (though I advise wearing more sunscreen than I did last time)
-Dia Beacon, another museum just outside the city
-Picnicking at Fort Tryon
-Movies at the Rooftop Cinema Club
-Mister Softee ice cream
-Going to a Yankees game (not into sports, but nothing says New York quite like it)
Cappuccino Classified
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Longtime newsletter guest J is hosting a launch event for his brand Creissen Artistwear this Thursday in the East Village. He creates tailored workwear and art wares for amateur and professional artists. Come stop by to see custom jackets, view original artwork, and have a drink. To find out more, visit creissen.com.
Updates on the bag brand
Lots going on behind the scenes! I am continuing conversations to secure a Manhattan vendor.
Look of the week
This is one of those outfits I wouldn’t wear, but I really enjoyed looking at. I thought she struck an interesting balance between dressed up and casual. Having never been able to aptly navigate the heels and socks combo myself, I was intrigued by the strappy sandals and gray wool knee socks. The bag looks like potentially a Balenciaga City Bag, which I recently read is making a comeback, or at least it’s a pretty good substitute. The city slicker bag and shoe situation is contrasted by the knee-length gingham skirt and plain tee.
What’s on the bedside table
I’m headed back to Turkey in a few weeks to see my in-laws, so it seemed fitting to finally finish the The Passenger: Turkey. I have been reading this for truly more than a year, because every time I pick it up, F. has boatloads of his own commentary to add (which I love!). The Passenger has issues for a number of different countries—I read the Japan issue before visiting in March. They ask contemporary authors to write pieces about what I would call the culture beyond the headlines. This issue has articles about Turkey’s fanatic football clubs, the ships buried in the Bosphorus (written by one of my favorite authors, Elif Batuman), and Turkish humor magazines. The essays always illuminate something bigger about society. The football clubs story, for example, was told in the context of the 2016 Gezi Park protests, one of the biggest popular uprisings in the country’s recent history. I would highly recommend looking up this series for any country you’re traveling to in the future—it’s way better than a travel guide.
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This week I am….putting in the hard work.
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