NEW YORK, United States — Beyond the stairs, we were keen to see behind the curtain of the latest exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. The eyeballs outside of the famous gala are vitally important — not only from a canonical-meets-fabric of fashion history perspective, but also from the ground game perspective of aligning value to diaspora designers for the casual visitor who very likely is not familiar.

The premise of the exhibition (since the scrapping of the alleged original plan of a John Galliano retrospective) was to explore a broad survey of fashion objects inspired by nature spanning 400 years as well as archival pieces that are rarely on view due to their fragility. The curatorial selection of over 220 garments and accessories heavily leaned towards European, but a strong yet mighty handful of contemporary diaspora brands had their moment in the spotlight. Let’s take a look!

TORISHEJU

The very early days designer has secured some pretty incredible exposures — one of the last Edward Enninful’s British Vogue covers, a global buy from Dover Street Market, and the list continues with the seven-piece acquisition into The Met’s permanent collections. Inspired by Mami Wata, Torisheju Dumi’s 2023 collection embraces a particularly sobering aesthetic. The images don’t do justice to the bias-cut sculptural forms made of deadstock fabric. The puckering harkens to similar techniques to that of Feben, but something about the rippled edge also recalls techniques perfected by designer Stephen Burrows.

THEBE MAGUGU

In an exhibition dominated by European names, the curators also picked up from the Autumn 2023 collection “Folklorics” of South African designer Thebe Magugu. Leveraging a shipwreck print inspired by yet another site-specific narrative of a water based figure in African folklore, the ensemble takes center stage in a space dedicated to the role of sirens. This marked the fourth acquisition of Thebe Magugu into the permanent archive of the Costume Institute.

Other exhibited brands include Botter’s Spring 2023 “Black Heart” and “Second Skin Fish” dresses, but overall, the curatorial team certainly missed an opportunity to include a broader array of designers with anthropomorphic mythological inspirations in their oeuvres, including Maki Oh’s Look 10 from Fall 2015 “Mermaids” collection as one example. On an encouraging note: Erykah Badu was decked out in three head-to-toe looks for the Met Gala, including dreamy millinery, by Kingston, Jamaica-based label Francesca Lake.

Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion is open now through September 2. Lead Image Courtesy of Thebe Magugu.