Nick Knight photographed by Britt Lloyd.
Knight believes Sleeping Beauties is a watershed show.
Find out why, below.
Nick Knight photographed by Britt Lloyd.
Those dreams, those aspirations, which make people buy clothes, are so important to understand.
Its moving…you’re free to sort of imagine it dancing across the ballroom again.
Weve had the privilege to work with the conservators, and, of course, they know everything.
The Siren room with Thebe Magugu’s ensembele,center,and a video of crashing waves.
So you look at the dress and you say, Okay, well why does it move that way?
Well, because its got six petticoats underneath it and theyre made of this material.
So theres all this information about the structure of the dress, which we can bring back to it.
The grande finale.
Did they expect to dance a lot, or not at all?
Would people be sitting down?
How would it be viewed; by candle light, by gaslight?
The Garden room.
Thats where the Met [archivists] are so brilliant because they have this wealth of knowledge.
The sound of a dress was really important in its selling, to articulate this fantastic scroop.
The idea of how technology is being used to make fashion live again is the foundation of the exhibition.
Red Roses
And so it should be, because I think fashion is very precious.
However, it then does start to fade and to die and to slightly deteriorate.
Thats something that you couldnt have done 10 years ago, you couldnt have done five years ago.
Insect necklaces from Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1938 Pagan collection.
[But now] you have this moving, dancing, gliding dress again.
The Siren room with Thebe Magugus ensembele,center,and a video of crashing waves.
It was Vionnets intention to say that something was brewing in 1930s Europe, something very deeply unpleasant.
The Talking Dress
The very last dress in the exhibition is this beautiful Callot Soeurs wedding dress.
Fashion and the Senses
Sleeping Beauties is also about fashion and the senses.
Here we tried to stimulate the senses.
How many more trainers, how many more little black dresses, how many more handbags?
We all know we want things to look good.
We all know we want things to show off with.
This is, in my opinion, quite a watershed show.
you gotta get some sensory perception of why that fashion was so important in that time.
Red Roses
The Art of Fashion?
I think its largely a Protestant problem.
In the westNorth America and Englandwe are primarily a Protestant culture and we dont celebrate decoration.
We see vanity as a sin; its all slightly uptight.
They would never say that about contemporary art now.
[The media] is starting to wake up to how foolish they sound when they talk about fashion.
But its not our problem; well let them catch up at their own rate.
But weve also gone right back to painting.
But its an old technique.
How interesting would it be to work out what paintbrush Francis Bacon used?
It would be a bit interesting, but maybe not compared to what he was saying.
Its there to simply enable conversations to happen, but it isnt an end in itself.
Insect necklaces from Elsa Schiaparellis 1938 Pagan collection.
Theres a new exciting medium of photography on the scene and thats much better for fashion.
Oh, its just a mechanical thing, how can it reflect human nature?
How can photography ever be more than a technical rendition of reality?
It is also, in my opinion, a much bigger step.
Thats not what evolutions about.
A lot of this stuff is so big, its very hard to see the edges of it.
Its very hard to see how big it is and what effect its going to have.
My feeling is its a total revolution in our species.
But everybody understands, accepts, thinks, understands, and everybody sort of gets all worked up about.
But it is allowing us to do things which previously were almost unimaginable.
I think I said that we all presume that we are at the end of the evolutionary journey.
Wheres the proof of that?
Maybe were halfway through, two-thirds through, or maybe just at the beginning….
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
