By women, for women: A new exhibit at The Met highlights women fashion designers

Although women have been used to sell clothes to other women, they’ve largely been left out of powerful positions in the fashion industry.

“Women Dressing Women,” a new exhibit from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, highlights how women’s creative contributions and labor in the fashion industry have gone largely unrecognized.

The exhibit, which opened on Thursday, features roughly 80 pieces from more than 70 women designers, whose works date from the early 20th century to today. Most of the pieces are from the museum’s Costume Institute.

Although it boasts big names like Rei Kawakubo, Diane Von Furstenberg and Jil Sander, the exhibit also spotlights lesser-known talents.

One such talent is Ann Lowe, a Black designer who most notably designed Jacqueline Kennedy’s 1953 wedding gown. Lowe’s work has garnered mainstream attention in the past few years, and the show features one of her pieces: a cream-colored evening gown with pink flowers sewn into its lower half.

The show is organized according to four themes: anonymity, visibility, agency, and absence/omission.

While many people might assume the person whose name is on the label is solely responsible for creating an item of clothing, the exhibition’s theme of “anonymity” aims to show how teams of people bring garments to life.

“We hope that our viewers consider and take away the numerous hands involved in the production of fashion,” said Mellissa Huber, one of the exhibition’s curators.

On the surface, women run the fashion industry. Female models dominate clothing advertisements, and women spend three times more than men on clothes — a total of $159 billion in U.S. sales, according to a 2018 report from McKinsey & Co.