In this age of fast fashion, it's a luxury for style lovers to pause and ponder the creative possibilities of clothing. This past week, an edifying exhibit entitled Manus X Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology opened at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show, which features over 150 designer ensembles from the early 20th century to the present, comprised of both haute couture and ready-to-wear pieces, focuses on the creative process and examines how designers are reconciling fashion's handmade work with what is made by machine. From embroidery and feather work to laser cutting and ultrasonic welding, the variety of techniques on display is dizzying. Andrew Bolton, the dynamic head curator of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, is known for his theatrical approach to exhibitions. Intent on entertaining audiences, Bolton, who came to the Met from London's Victoria and Albert Museum back in 2002, strives to charm and educate museum goers by "almost having [the] objects have a conversation with each other."
I spoke with Bolton from New York about the new show, debunking the mythologies around fashion production, and how Manus X Machina aims to make us appreciate the inventiveness that goes into what we wear.
It's wonderful that we've reached this point in time when people really are interested in the back story of fashion. What do you attribute that to?
Fashion's always had a central role in contemporary culture, but I think the Internet has made it even more relevant. It's made curating shows more difficult because people have such a wide understanding of fashion now – even historical fashion. We always try to curate exhibitions that challenge people's expectations about a subject matter, or expand the boundaries of fashion. I think part of the interest in fashion is that it's so accessible; it's so central to our lives. People can relate to it very quickly. I think fashion, more than any other art form, can respond to the zeitgeist quickly and can project the zeitgeist. And it's very democratic. Even though haute couture is out of the reach for most people, we all wear clothes and we can relate to fashion as a wearable art form.
In this exhibit you're exploring the handmade versus the machine made, but we're in an age when, really, these things are working together.
Absolutely. And I think that people are expecting the show to be about technology per se, which it isn't. It's really about fashion in an age of technology and how designers are trying to reconcile the handmade and the machine made in their design process. I think what's interesting is that objects that seem machine made are often handmade, and vice versa. It's very rare to find garments that are exclusively machine made or exclusively handmade. All good designers use both practices in their work. It's really about the end result. I'm not a great fan of technology in its own right. I think technology should be used as a vehicle to really extend more design practice. I think what's interesting is that since the birth of haute couture in the mid-19th century, the hand and the machine often have been placed in a dichotomist relationship, particularly in haute couture, which is meant to represent the hand, and the machine is meant to represent ready-to-wear. But that really isn't the case. A lot of the exhibition tries to present the hand and the machine not as a dichotomous relationship, but almost as a spectrum of practice, or a continuum. The gap between high end ready-to-wear and haute couture is diminishing because both practices are sharing techniques; the space between the two is what I find really interesting. We're trying to debunk some of the mythologies around the handmade and the machine made, and also some of the values associated with the two. People often think that the hand is all about exclusivity and luxury and the machine is about mediocrity or mass production. But the fact is that sometimes, the machine is even more time-consuming and more expensive than the hand.
Without a doubt the most difficult thing that a curator has to do is go through the editing process. How tough was that for this show?
It was so tough because I have a big wall in my office where I put all my pieces that I want to include in exhibitions. And sometimes the pieces aren't available, sometimes they don't exist anymore, so you're always rejigging your storyboard. But I want to highlight the museum's permanent collection; I actually chose pieces that relate to items we have in the museum's permanent collection. That was a guiding principle for me and it helped the editing process enormously. And I also focus on designers who have deliberately and continuously tried to reconcile the hand and the machine in their work. People like Issey Miyake, Hussein Chalayan, Karl Lagerfeld, Iris Van Herpen and Nicolas Ghesquière.
Was this always a fantasy for you, to find yourself in charge of piecing together such masterful exhibits?
I think what I love the most is storytelling and I gravitate towards designers who tell stories in their work. Something I like doing is creating a narrative for people, so as they walk through the exhibition, it's almost as if they're reading a book. You have the overarching theme but within that there are smaller chapters, so to speak, in which people can engage with the dialogues of the objects. When you go to the exhibition it's almost as if each garment unfolds, and each juxtaposition unfolds as a sort of story.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Jeanne Beker