The Met’s exhibition Costume Art (Image credit: MetMuseum.org) and Devil Wear’s Prada 2 (Image credit: HarpersBazaar.com)
Timing is everything. I recently saw The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opens with Runway (a thinly veiled Vogue) under fire for publishing a glossy puff piece that conveniently overlooks a brand’s sweatshop labor practices. The backlash threatens the magazine’s credibility, forcing a scramble to restore integrity. It’s hard not to see a parallel. The Met and Vogue’s new exhibition, Costume Art, feels less like a celebration of fashion and more like an exercise in reputational repair.
According to the Met, the exhibition “examines the centrality of the dressed body,” pairing garments with artworks to explore the relationship between clothing, the body, and fashion as an embodied art form. It’s an elegant premise—but one that sidesteps the more urgent realities shaping fashion today.
Like Runway in the film, Vogue—and by extension, the Met—feels increasingly out of step with both the industry and its audience. Years of overlooking body diversity and prioritizing mega-brands with massive advertising budgets over emerging designers cannot be erased by staging an exhibition featuring diverse mannequins and a nod to streetwear. Representation, when deployed selectively, risks reading as strategy rather than substance.
The Met’s Costume Art exhibition with body diversity on display (Image credit MetMuseum.org).
Insult to Injury
A bit of context matters. Diana Vreeland, Vogue’s editor-in-chief from 1963 to 1971, helped shape the modern Met Gala during her tenure at the Costume Institute from 1973 to 1986. She introduced themed exhibitions and cultivated a glamorous guest list, but she also championed young, emerging designers—myself included—and actively supported the New York fashion community. Her vision was expansive, not exclusionary.
Today’s Gala, by contrast, has taken on a distinctly transactional edge. Under Anna Wintour, it has evolved into what many see as a “pay-to-play” spectacle, where influence can be bought as readily as it is earned. The widely publicized $10 million donation from Lauren and Jeff Bezos only underscores the point. Against this backdrop, Costume Art begins to feel less like a thoughtful inquiry into whether fashion is art, and more like a carefully orchestrated PR moment.
More Damage Control?
Ball Without Billionaires runway show in the Meatpacking (Image credit HarpersBazaar.com)
The Fix?
If The Devil Wears Prada 2 gets anything right, it’s this: credibility can’t be curated – it has to be earned. Vogue and the Met may be trying to recalibrate their image, but true relevance will require more than a well-staged exhibition. It will demand a genuine shift in values, priorities, and who gets a seat at the table.
Chloé Malle, the new head of editorial content at Vogue U.S., may want to take a cue from Anne Hathaway’s character, Andy Sachs, in Devil Wears Prada 2, and learn how to navigate the changing world of fashion publishing and the fashion industry.
