About Time: Fashion & Duration

Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 29 October 2020 - 7 February 2021

This exhibition catalogue traces the evolution of fashion, from 1870 to the present, through a linear timeline of iconic garments, each paired with an alternate design that jumps forward or backward in time. These unexpected pairings, which relate to one another through shape, motif, material, pattern, technique, or decoration, create a disruptive fashion chronology that conflates notions of past, present, and future.

Virginia Woolf serves as "ghost narrator," and excerpts from her novels reflect on the passage of time with each subsequent pairing. This stunning book reveals fashion's paradoxical connection to linear notions of time.