Met's Costume Institute Explores Fashion in the Age of Technology

The spring 2016 exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute explores how fashion designers are reconciling the handmade and the machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear. The show is called Manus x Machina – Fashion in an Age of Technology, and on display are more than 150 ensembles dating from the early 20th century to the present. The exhibition looks at the inception of haute couture in the 19th century, when the sewing machine was invented, and the emergence of the distinction between sewing by hand and sewing by machine at the onset of mass production. Curator Andrew Bolton says: “If you look back at the invention of the Jacquard loom or the sewing machine, fashion has always been defined by the latest technologies.” The exhibition is on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until August 14. metmuseum.org