Costume Art puts the dressed body at the centre of fashion’s museum moment

New York’s Costume Art exhibition is pairing garments with works of art across centuries, asking visitors to look at fashion through the body that wears it. The show opened in May and is scheduled to run through 10 January 2027.

Nearly 400 objects bring clothing into conversation with sculpture, painting and other works. The displays consider familiar ideals such as the classical body alongside bodies often overlooked in fashion narratives, including pregnant and aging bodies. A nineteenth-century walking dress appears beside a study for a Seurat painting, while contemporary garments meet much older artworks.

The exhibition followed a celebrity-heavy Met Gala that helped introduce its “Fashion is Art” idea to a broad audience. Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour co-chaired the May benefit. The gallery experience offers a different pace from red-carpet spectacle: it lets visitors compare construction, material and representation up close.

The show gives fashion a cultural context beyond a seasonal trend, with garments treated as objects shaped by movement, identity and the changing ways bodies are pictured.