Costume Institute’s Spring 2017 exhibition: Rei Kawakubo

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that The Costume Institute's spring 2017 exhibition will be Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons on view from May 4th through September 4, 2017. Presented in the Museum's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall on the second floor, the exhibition will examine Kawakubo's fascination with interstitiality, or the space between boundaries. Existing within and between entities—self/other, object/subject, fashion/anti-fashion—Kawakubo's work challenges conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and, ultimately, fashionability. The exhibition will feature approximately 120 examples of Kawakubo's womenswear designs for Comme des Garçons, dating from her first Paris runway show in 1981 to her most recent collection.

In celebration of the opening, The Met's Costume Institute Benefit, also known as The Met Gala, will take place on Monday, May 1, 2017. The evening's co-chairs will be Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour. Rei Kawakubo will serve as Honorary Chair. The event is The Costume Institute's main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements.