Aware that the West’s view of China has been distorted by inaccurate representations of the country and its culture in the Western media and fashions of the 20th century, a new exhibition hosted by the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (May 7 – Aug 16) is trying to redress this unbalance.
As explained by the South China Morning Post, the show’s title, “China Through The Looking Glass“, a direct reference to Lewis Carroll’s novel, was chosen to reflect the theme of misrepresentation. According to Andrew Bolton, the curator of The Met’s Costume Institute: “In this world, everything is topsy-turvy and back to front. Like Alice’s make-believe world, the China reflected in the fashions in the exhibition is a fiction, a fabulous invention offering an alternative reality with a dreamlike nature. The show is not about China per se, but about a reflected fantasy of China.”
Two Italian fashion designers have been invited to contribute to the exhibition: Valentino and Roberto Cavalli. Their stunning creations will be on show together with the ones of Yves St Laurent, Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld.
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