The Bite Magazine - Summer 2019 - Issue 25

bite exhibition Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BFA.com/Zach Hilty Max Hollein, Director and CEO of The Met, described the col- lection as, “Camp’s disruptive nature and subversion of mod- ern aesthetic values has often been trivialised, but this exhibi- tion reveals that it has had a profound influence on both high art and popular culture. By tracing its evolution and high- lighting its defining elements, the show embodies the ironic sensibilities of this audacious style, challenges conventional understandings of beauty and taste, and establishes the critical role that this important genre has played in the history of art and fashion.” Others went on to describe the importance of this exhibition, and those like it, for their great importance in helping to grow an ever-changing face of fashion and what’s in current accept- ance as personal style goes. “Fashion is the most overt and en- during conduit of the camp aesthetic,” said Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. “Ef- fectively illustrating Sontag’s Notes on ‘Camp’, the exhibition advances creative and critical dialogue about the ongoing and ever-evolving impact of camp on fashion.” Basically, it’s ok for you to be you, and the louder, more over-the-top you’d like to be, the better. Go for it. Wear a dress made out of a chandelier or a boa with cowboy boots or a dress made out of plastic. Overall, the exhibition features roughly 250 objects, including menswear, and womenswear, as well as paintings, sculptures, and drawings dating from the 17th century to the present. As one enters the exhibition, it begins by showing the origins of camp with a section describing Versailles as a ‘camp Eden’ and addresses the concept of se camper — ‘to posture boldly’ — in the royal courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV. After this, things flow into and then focus on the figure of the dandy as a 'camp ideal’ and ties camp’s origins to the queer subcultures of Eu- rope and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sontag defined camp in her essay as an aesthetic and charted its key traits and characteristics. Moving on, the exhibition opens up into a large, two-story room within the second portion of this display that is devoted to how these elements — which include irony, humour, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricali- ty, and exaggeration - are articulated in fashion. Gorgeous and painstakingly crafted gowns, suits, and costumes of all Dress by Jeremy Scott for Moschino Spring/Summer 2017