Fashion isn’t just for the eyes: Upcoming Met Gala exhibit aims to be a multi-sensory experience

NEW YORK — Fashion, most would surely agree, is meant to be seen. Open to the public beginning May 10, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” features 250 items that are being revived from years of slumber in the institute’s vast archive, with some in such a delicate state of demise that they can’t be draped on a mannequin or shown upright. As the museum puts it, the coat “will grow and die over the course of the exhibition.” “Sleeping Beauties” will be organized around themes of earth, air and water — but also, Bolton says, around the various senses. “And that’s the scent of the person who wore it, the natural body odors that they emitted, what they smoked, what they ate, where they lived.” For these galleries, the museum worked with Norwegian “smell artist” Sissel Tolaas, who took 57 “molecular readings” of garments, all to create scents that will waft through the rooms and enhance the visitor’s connection to the items on display. The effect, Bolton says, is “to capture the minutiae of movements.” The same effect is achieved with a silk taffeta garment, featuring a sound called “scroop,” a combination of the words “scrape” and “whoop.“ “I know it sounds like a garage band,” quips Bolton, “but it’s a specific sound that silk makes.” It can be loud or soft, depending on the finishing of the silk.