John Singer Sargent, Egon Schiele, Alex Katz, Elizabeth Peyton—I could go on, but it’s a bit silly. Fashion is ever-present in art, and fashion is itself wearable craftwork elevated to the sublime.
And Sherald, who has works in The Met’s permanent collection, had an idea. What about a collaboration with a designer to turn a garment featured in one of her art works—which often feature au courant evening wear, not unlike the post-impressionists that shocked Paris—into her look for the evening?
“I feel like I’ve always resisted a hierarchy between the two—I think fashion is already art and I think art operates on the body,” she said. “I think it’s two temporalities meeting. And the idea that fashion is art, it isn’t new. I think it’s often denied. But I think what’s happening, it’s like a correction and the museum is acknowledging what designers and artists have always understood: that the body is a site of composition just like canvas or sculpture.”
And so, when she got tapped for the committee, she knew she wanted to ask Thom Browne to bring one of the dresses she’s painted to life. He’s one of the most celebrated American designers of his generation, or any. And he’s particularly well-suited for this dress code at the Costume Institute Benefit, as his clothes push into the realm of installation and performance art. Browne, too, is in The Met’s permanent collection.
“I texted Thom like, ‘Oh my God, he’s probably not even going to answer,’ Sherald told me. “In my mind, it was like, ‘Amy, who are you?’ Do you think you can text Thom and send him this and be like, ‘What do you think? Can we do this?’”
Browne, however, said yes, regardless of the sprint to make Sherald’s idea a reality.
“It was a little later than I think we both would’ve wanted, but I would jump through hoops to do it for Amy, because I just love what she does and I love everything that she represents,” he said. “And it’s so humbling that when she says, if I was a painter, I would paint like her. There’s very, very, very few people that could possibly paint like Amy Sherald.”
She began the sketch based on her painting, keeping the dress faithful to how it’s shown on the canvas. And then Browne brought it to life, fabricating it from the wisp of a dream in the atelier.
“I think Thom is one of the only people I know that can translate my work—he’s extending it and giving it another life,” Sherald said. “So the garment just becomes another site where the work can exist.”
“Well, I have to say, I’m going to give all the credit to Amy, really, because this is her vision,” Browne said. “It’s referencing, I think, one of her best and most important paintings to herself. And who embodies this theme more than Amy Sherald does?”
When Sherald hit the red carpet Monday night, she posed on the gala’s steps, placing an insouciant hand on her hip.