Met's Costume Institute reopens with Charles James exhibition

The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has reopened its renovated spaces under the new name Anna Wintour Costume Institute with the exhibition "Charles James: Beyond Fashion." The show, first presented during New York Fashion Week in spring 2014, is installed in the new Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Galleries on the museum's first floor. It features dozens of iconic gowns by Charles James (1906–1978), an English-born couturier who worked in New York. James had no formal fashion training—he was expelled from Harrow School and started a hat shop in Chicago—and preferred the term "shaped by" over "designed by." His creations, weighing up to 15 kilograms, were constructed with whalebone, crinoline, corsetry, and chiffon, resembling architectural structures. The exhibition includes hi-tech corners with 3D animations that dissect the complex internal structures of the garments. James's key innovations include wrap-over trousers, figure-eight skirts, cloverleaf cuts, spiral and balloon shapes, and torchon trains. He famously stated, "Nothing of value is produced without a deep study of structure, reduced, phase by phase, to the minimum." The exhibition runs at the Met Museum.