Next year’s Met Gala will get a fashionably high-tech makeover. Today the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that the 2016 theme will be Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology. Next year, the museum will display over 100 pieces from both haute couture and ready-to-wear houses that feature a combination of handmade and machine-made designs. It will also include pieces made from more cutting-edge technologies like 3D printing, thermo-shaping and laser cutting, as well as a series of workshops that show these processes in action.
“Traditionally, the distinction between the haute couture and prêt-à-porter was based on the handmade and the machine-made,” Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met's Costume Institute, told Vogue. “But recently this distinction has become increasingly blurred as both disciplines have embraced the practices and techniques of the other.”
The Met Gala will take place on May 2 and will be hosted by co-chairs Idris Elba, Jonathan Ive, Taylor Swift, and Anna Wintour with Nicolas Ghesquière, Karl Lagerfeld, and Miuccia Prada serving as honorary chairs. And because Apple is still trying to make the Apple Watch fashionable, the Silicon Valley-based company will be sponsoring the annual event.
