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Thursday, June 6, 2019

#ReadThis #MetCamp @YalePress @YaleBooks Camp: Notes on Fashion by #AndrewBolton #FashionAlert @MetMuseum Our Coverage Sponsored by Hallak Cleaners the Couture Cleaner @hallakcleaners @hallakcouturecleaner



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One of our favorite parts of existence at all in Manhattan is the Fashion Press Preview at The Met, which we have been honored to cover for eleven consecutive years:

This year, it's CAMP!
Met Camp 2019:

To fully appreciate any of these exhibits, one absolutely positively must read Yale University Press's corresponding book! We could not be more thrilled to highly recommend CAMP!

If you've ever emailed Peachy, you know a quote by Oscar Wilde is hard to beat, and one's found immediately once you open this great work on the inside of the spine.  There's double the pleasure with a formal account on the left and even more fashion visuals on the right: I and II respectively.  Of course we love most that Mover and Shaker Zandra Rhodes was included and of course we met her at The Met initially a previous year during this press preview.

The popularity of these fashion exhibits are off the charts, and when you read this book you can spend real quality quiet time with the contents of the exhibit and read it all in peace!  We recommend reading it at least twice before you visit the exhibit, so you get the most of your visit when you go. 

If you are not overly familiar with Camp by definition, all will be clear by the conclusion of this book.  Exaggeration and overdoing it have never been done so well, hence the double edition!  It is truly a celebration of imagination and creative enthusiasm.  Page 163 is most essential as it contains Sontag's notes which are the thesis for this entire phenomena.

We had no idea this began with the World Fair in New York City in 1964, but now that we know it did, we are going to ask our family members that were there!  From the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to 57 pages of a comprehensive introduction by Fabio Cleto, the stage is set for the aesthetics that follow that hit the high note on individualism.

From Hogarth's analysis of beauty to Moliere's use of camp as a verb, Camp: Notes on Fashion is one of the most innovative and well-researched fashion works we've ever seen as it is so conceptual and interpreted so widely.  In our grammar worship we also appreciate how the word camp is examined as more than one language function (adjective is after verb! and later of course noun) however, regardless of its functional form, it is packed with fun.

Our favorites in I include:
*Liza Minelli on page 117 (we loved meeting her-see our instagram)
*Panoramic Versailles page 138 one of our favorite rooms at The Met
*Tiffany lamp p. 144
*Josephine Baker (Chez Josephine under her son Jean Claude was a favorite when he was alive) and Coco Chanel on p. 148
*Warhol p. 158-59

In II:
(unnumbered)
Zandra Rhodes, Karl Lagerfeld, House of Dior, Philip Treacy, Marc Jacobs (whom we also met at another Met press preview early on), House of Schiaparelli, House of Chanel, Gucci....know what?  We loved all of it.  You will have the best time looking at Part II as you understand it so well, having read Part I first.

No matter how in depth your fashion knowledge is prior to this, it will undoubtedly become greatly enhanced after.  And when reading it a second time, it will really gel.
Read it with ALL your flamingos and toast to High Camp with a flute of champagne!  



Camp: Notes on Fashion 
Andrew Bolton 
with Karen Van Godtsenhoven and Amanda Garfinkel Introduction by Fabio Cleto 

Although an elusive concept, “camp” can be found in most forms of artistic expression, revealing itself as a complex aesthetic that challenges the status quo. As an expression of the playful dynamic between high art and popular culture, fashion both embraces and flaunts such camp modes as irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration. Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” this multifaceted publication presents the sartorial manifestations of the camp sensibility while contributing new theoretical and conceptual insights to the camp canon through texts and images. Stunning new photography by Johnny Dufort highlights works by exceptional fashion designers including Thom Browne, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Alessandro Michele, Franco Moschino, Yves Saint Laurent, Jeremy Scott, Anna Sui, Gianni Versace, and Vivienne Westwood. 

Andrew Bolton is Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
Accompanying the exhibition at The Met Fifth Avenue, on view May 9–September 8, 2019. 

The exhibition and the catalogue are made possible by Gucci. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.

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