Life, death and sleeping beauties at the Met

There’s a lot to explore—literally and figuratively—in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute’s new exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” opening Friday, May 10.

It’s about nature and the cycle of life (and it turns out a lot is about death). It also touches on chemistry, biology, mythology and more, all told through the lens of fashion. In addition to this litany of themes, the show also tells the story of The Met itself and the goings-on behind the scenes. It’s about how archived garments are preserved and how they decompose. It’s not just about clothes, but how they were worn and who wore them. It tells the story of us.

It is an in-depth exhibition about more than 400 years of fashion that stimulates the senses. It can be a heady experience. There are the sounds of crashing waves, the calling of birds and the reading of poems. There’s textured wallpaper you can touch, courtesy of German artist Sissel Tollas, wallpaper you can scratch and smell, and pipes you can sniff. Frankly, this part of the exhibition kicks like a mule and is unforgettable, with smell being such a powerful force of memory.

“Sleeping Beauties” was curated by this week’s guest, Andrew Bolton, chief curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Met, whose previous blockbusters include “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” “China Through the Looking Glass” and “Heavenly.” directed. Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” some of the most visited exhibitions in the museum’s entire history. Today’s fashion-exhibition-heavy museum landscape has much to do with Bolton’s successes, but with the eye of his trained anthropologist, he always fails to emphasize the intellectual and human connotations in the garments.

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