While Edward Norton’s Hulk unleashes it’s fury on cinemas this weekend, a slew of superheroes will enjoy a more civilized setting. The recently opened “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art examines the relationship between superhero costumes and modern fashion. A gleaming, mirrored hall houses 60 elaborate ensembles, creating a visual delight that can be enjoyed equally by fashion elite or the most discerning comic book critic. I spoke with Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton to get his take on superheroes, high fashion and his preferred super powers.
PLAYBOY: Tell me how the project began.
ANDREW BOLTON: The original idea began about five years ago. At that period we were looking at extreme sportswear…anything that enhanced your natural abilities. Things that made you run faster or swim faster, those sorts of things that literally transformed you into a superhero. Then I put it on hold until last summer and I became fascinated with how superheroes embodied particular metaphorical meanings or how they reflected our social or political anxieties… how they were mirrors of the zeitgeist. That got me thinking about how they reached into certain aspects of fashion. I switched the whole entity from sportswear towards symbolic association between fashion and the superhero.
PLAYBOY: Has the Met done anything like this before?
BOLTON: They did something called “Rock Star” a few years before, which was one of the first forays into pop culture but I think “Superheroes” is a departure. Comic books are seen as a low form of artistic expression but I think that is a strength. It frees itself up to make these strong socio-political comments. It is fascinating to go back and read Superman comics from the beginning when his narratives were all about the Depression or the second World War or the Cold War. The narratives strongly relate to what is happening in everyday life. It seems so trivial, but they really address serious issues.
PLAYBOY: You include everything from Nike bathing suits to Armani evening dresses. How do you select the fashion pieces?
BOLTON: They really came from the superheroes. At the heart of the superheroes are issues related to the bodies: identity and transformation. I looked at designers that use the body as a vehicle to extend notions of beauty, glamour and sexuality. Alexander McQueen, Galliano… these are all designers who try to offer different images of beauty. It was really looking at Superman and connecting the costume to something designed by Moschino that used Superman iconography as a starting point. I wanted every superhero in the exhibition to have a film presence. Most of the iconic superheroes have made it onscreen and they are the ones designers have looked to for inspiration. There was a correlation between iconic comic books and the recent films.
PLAYBOY: Why did fashion suddenly become a theme that worked with these superhero costumes?
BOLTON: I think fashion was going down a different route. Five years ago the dominant aesthetic in terms of fashion was a softer, overt femininity. The idea of a hard edged glamour didn’t seem relevant five years ago. I shelved it because fashion wasn’t reflecting the superhero aesthetic. Over the last few years there has been a return to the 80’s aesthetic. The 80’s supermodel, the more overtly sexualized imagery of femininity. I thought superheroes were this dominant archetype for the 1980’s and I felt designers were exploring this haughty glamour. It was just more timely to do it now.
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