Fashion Meets Music: Five Times the MET Gala Took Inspiration from the Music World

The 2018 MET Gala took place Monday, with celebrities taking to the red carpet to celebrate the intersection of fashion and history. This year’s theme, which coincides with the Costume Institute’s yearly exhibit, was ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,’ which focuses on how religion has influenced fashion. The night also brought music into the mix, with Madonna performing her Vatican-banned single “Like a Prayer” and a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

While this year’s musical contribution may have only been in performance only, music and its contribution to fashion have made their way into the MET Gala and subsequent costume exhibits many times in the past. From exhibits about punk and rock ‘n’ roll to those about dance fashion, these exhibits have looked at the history of music and culture through the lens of fashion.

Inspired by this year’s MET gala, Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, is taking a look at some of the Costume Institute’s music-themed exhibitions. Here are five that merged fashion with music and culture to give a unique perspective on the history of each.

1.       ‘PUNK: Chaos to Couture’ (2013): The Costume Institute’s most recent music-themed exhibit, ‘Chaos to Couture’ looked at the ways punk inspired high fashion. Historically, punk was (and still is) all about youth culture and rebellion and its fashion showed that. In the UK, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood created this “do-it-yourself” aesthetic that took from fashion (and bondage wear) and made it more accessible with holes, safety pins and razor blades. In turn, this aesthetic influenced high fashion, sparking inspiration for designers like Dior, Dolce and Gabana, Alexander McQueen and more.

2.       ‘Rock Style’ (2000): This turn-of-the-century exhibit took a look at how musical artists at various points in rock music’s history influenced style. Starting in the 1950s with Elvis Presley, it ran through fifty years of iconic music and style from the likes of the Beatles, Elton John, Tina Turner, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Grace Jones, Madonna and more. The exhibit also touched on particular trends, such as denim and black leather jackets.

3.       ‘AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion’ (2006): While not expressly about music, this exhibit on the history of British fashion contained a section dedicated to rebellion from fashion norms. The exhibit made it a point to juxtapose typical, classic fashion of the time with the postmodernism of punk and the modernism of dandyism.

4.       ‘Diaghilev: Costumes and Designs of the Ballets Russes’ (1978): Even in the early years of the gala, music was a front and center in the attached exhibit. In 1978, the Costume Institute focused on the Ballets Russes, a controversial yet influential dance company from the 1910s that united music, fashion and storytelling in new and exciting ways. The troupe was especially known for their designs, which were created by the period’s most groundbreaking artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Coco Chanel, as well as their music, which featured works from up-and-comers like Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy and Sergei Prokofiev.

5.       ‘Dance’ (1986): Where there is music, there is usually dance. And dance culture gave way to its own sense of fashion. ‘Dance’ chronicled 200 years worth of dance fashion from elegant ball gowns to minidresses in an attempt to display the fashion of “fun” and “joy.”

Music and fashion have maintained a side-by-side relationship for centuries. Over the years, the MET Gala and the Costume Institute have explored this relationship in their yearly exhibits. Though this year’s was not one of them, the institute’s choice in having Madonna combine the exhibit’s religious theme with both fashion and music at the gala this week similarly plays into that intersection of art forms.

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