Andrew Bolton’s 2020 Met Gala Theme:
About Time: Fashion and Duration

“It’s a reimagining of fashion history that’s fragmented, discontinuous, and heterogenous” -Wendy Yu, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute

In Nov 2019 the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that the 2020 exhibition at the Costume Institute would be based on the theme: “About Time: Fashion and Duration”, showcasing a century-and-a-half of fashion history & presented along a “disruptive” timeline (Vogue, 2019).

Head Curator of the Met, Andrew Bolton, was inspired by the scene in Orlando (a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel) where Orlando experiences time travel as she runs through a maze, resulting in an outfit change from 18th century dress to 19th century dress.

Andrew Bolton says: “This exhibition will consider the ephemeral nature of fashion, employing flashbacks and fast-forwards to reveal how it can be both linear and cyclical.”

In Time and Free Will: An Essay of the Immediate Data of Consciousness by French philosopher Henri Bergson, it is posited that duration is unextended, yet heterogenous & therefore cannot be juxtaposed. His theories on time & la durée also notably inspired this year’s theme.

“About Time: Fashion and Duration” focuses on the relationship that fashion has with time. Within the context of this year’s theme, fashion is understood as both linear and disruptive. We often see fashion as a reflection of the time period to which it belongs.

Despite this, the lines between periods of fashion are slowly blurring. We can see this happening on runways, red carpets, and in real life. Trends are being recycled faster than ever and, despite their efforts, they never stick for long.

From this, the HF Met Gala organizers came up with the concept for this year's dress code. “Temporal Conflation” describes the juxtaposition between time periods, referring to how shape, materials, pattern techniques and decorations can be connected despite era differences.

Bolton cites Lee McQueen’s use of the princess line from late 1870s gowns as an example of this juxtaposition: “Over the years McQueen continually worked with this elongated silhouette and I’ve always felt that the bumster was the most radical version of the way he achieved it."

The literature of Virginia Woolf also heavily inspired this year’s theme. Besides "Orlando: A Biography", "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse" also served as inspiration. All three novels use the distortion of time to emphasize gender, relationships, & existential issues.

Woolf’s works demonstrate art and expression without the restriction or confinement of socially constructed boundaries. We hope that as you prepare for the #HFMetGala, you are inspired to distort your own boundaries and blur your own lines.