The Met's Costume Institute has unveiled a pink-hued exhibition exploring camp fashion across the centuries, from the playful to the outrageous.
Camp: Notes on Fashion opens this week, following The Met Gala on Monday. Camp was chosen as the theme, thanks to the rising trend for deliberately exaggerated and theatrical fashion.
"We are experiencing a resurgence of camp," said Andrew Bolton, chief curator for the Costume Institute, at a launch event earlier this week.
Camp: Notes on Fashion responds to the rising trend for theatrical fashion
Although usually associated with LGBT culture, the word camp describes anything that is intentionally ostentatious or excessively effeminate.
"This exhibition might raise more questions than it answers: 'Is camp gay' 'Is camp political"' And, ultimately, 'What is camp"'," reads a statement from The Met. It starts with art from Versailles, the royal courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV of France
"There are periods, however, including the 1960s, the 1980s, and the era in which we live now, when camp comes to the fore as the defining aesthetic of the times," it said.
"It is no coincidence that camp resurfaces during moments of social, political, and economic instability ? when society is polarised ? because, despite its mainstreaming, it has never lost its power to subvert and to challenge the status quo."
Exhibition spaces are coloured in a vivid shade of pink
The show features meandering ex...