The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Clothing Collection

The Metropolitan Museum of Art includes the Costume Institute, a department that includes a collection of clothing and accessories that includes more than 30 thousand copies. After the modernization of the department in 2014, it was named after Anna Wintour. The complex includes both a gallery and a laboratory, where the preservation of ancient costumes, their research, and the formation of funds are carried out. It is also worth mentioning the library, which contains a huge number of books about fashion.

The Costume Institute was conceived as an independent organization, established in 1937. In 1946, it merged with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum held a large number of events, organized exhibitions, in particular, Cubism and Fashion, Four Seasons, Rock Style and others. In 2009, the fund was replenished with a collection of costumes from the Brooklyn Museum, which began to form in 1903. The oldest copies belong to the XV century.

Since textiles require special care, the collection is not always publicly available. The program is periodically updated, new exhibitions and excursions appear. One of the most visited was the exhibition in 2015, dedicated to the influence of Chinese culture on Western fashion – the number of visitors exceeded 800 thousand people.