"AngloMania"

"AngloMania", the Costume Institute exhibition that is open from this month, from May 1 through to September 4, in the English period rooms of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

AngloMania focuses on British fashion from 1976 to 2006, a period of astounding creativity and experimentation. Over the past 30 years, British fashion has been defined by a knowing and self-conscious historicism. In their search for novelty, designers have looked to past styles with an appetite that is as audacious as it is rapacious. Focusing on their postmodern, historicizing tendencies, this exhibition presents a series of tableaux based on Britain’s rich artistic traditions. The irony of satirical prints, the romance of landscape paintings, and the glamour and bravado of grand manner portraits are evoked through a wide spectrum of British designers. The exhibition is set in the Metropolitan Museum’s English period rooms—the Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries—to create a potent dialogue between the past and the present.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art


Historic English costumes will be juxtaposed with the work of fashion and accessory designers including Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Stephen Jones, Philip Treacy, and Manolo Blahnik. The exhibition is underwritten by Burberry (celebrating its 150th anniversary this year), a company that literally clothed the British Empire with ineffably practical, weather-resistant garments and that is now enjoying a design renaissance under the fashion direction of Yorkshire-born Christopher Bailey.
- www.style.com