ALL ABOUT THE BASE: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute is gearing up for the opening of “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” with some creative input from an artillery of American designers.
Starting Friday, The Met store will roll out select merchandise from Virgil Abloh, Prabal Gurung and other talents. Cooked up in partnership with Vogue, the line of limited products will only be available for purchase via The Met’s account on Instagram, which happens to be one of the exhibition’s sponsors. At a time when museums, like brands, are always trying to bolster their social media bases, The Met’s lineup of high-profile designers with sizable followings is in line with that strategy. Abloh, for example, has 6.2 million Instagram followers and Gurung has 827,000, whereas The Met has 3.9 million.
In time for the first designer drop, Instagram’s head of fashion and shopping platforms Eva Chen will host an IG Live Shopping event @voguemagazine Friday shortly before noon EST. Abloh will be on hand to reveal his Off-White items for The Met along with some yet-to-be-revealed celebrity guests.
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The Instagram-friendly shopping will not be a short-lived venture. The parties plan to keep the series running through April. In addition to Abloh and Gurung, other participating American fashion labels include Bode, Brothers Vellies, Christopher John Rogers, Collina Strada, Gypsy Sport and Pyer Moss. The Met Store will also sell a line of merchandise featuring key words from the show, which will among other things highlight fashion’s new vocabulary.
This fall’s exhibition opening is the first installment in what will be a two-part exhibition. “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” will bow in the American Wing’s period rooms on May 5.