#I will take ANY opportunity to celebrate my favourite celestial object

[luna-loveboop]

Happy Moon Day! Or Merry Moon Night, I couldn't decide on a greeting. It's the day humans walked on the moon! (July 20th) Which is obviously important and cool and AWESOME. Idk if this'll post before midnight or not we'll find out.

I went and watched the moon for moon day of course and. it was cloudy so no good moon pictures :/ But I just wanted to tell yall Merry Moon Day (or something like that) because I love the moon and think she deserves to be celebrated :)))

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New Post has been published on Titos London

#Blog New Post has been published on http://www.titoslondon.co.uk/this-is-how-the-met-gala-theme-is-decided-each-year/

This is how the Met Gala theme is decided each year

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual spring fashion show has become an institution in its own right, with the red carpet event and dinner that precedes it – the Met Gala – raising more than $12.5 million for the museum last year, while more than half a million visitors flocked to the exhibition itself. (In 2015, 815,992 people came to see China: Through the Looking Glass, making it the most popular show to date.) And it all starts with one decision: the theme. Behind the concept, curation and execution of it all is the self-confessed fashion nerd Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s chief curator.

How the theme is chosen

If the buzz around this year’s edition seems especially rapturous, there’s good reason. Titled Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, it explores the connection between fashion and Catholicism. Bolton is aware that the choice is controversial, juxtaposing as it does items of spiritual import with the world of more earthly, commerce-driven delights. Not that he minds. “I think every exhibition should generate debate,” he tells Vogue, days away from the grand opening. “I think it’s important to stimulate debate and to put ideas out there that are difficult to deal with or seen as problematic. That’s the role of any museum: to expand people’s ideas about a topic through objects.��

Choosing that topic is a complicated process. “What I try to do is work on a topic that seems timely, and that defines a cultural shift that’s happening or is about to happen,” explains Bolton . “We always try to have a menu of shows that are dynamic, that go back and forth on subjects from the past and the present, between thematic shows and monographic ones of a single designer. We try to mix it up.”

How the theme is approved

When Bolton and his team are happy with a theme, they present it to the museum’s director and president for approval, positions held by recent appointees Max Hollein and Daniel H. Weiss. Though this approval process takes place about a year in advance, the research Bolton and his team undertake happens years in advance. The hands-on curation of a show starts as soon as the spring show opens, giving the 32-person team 12 months to make the magic happen all over again.

After receiving the blessing from the top brass, then Anna Wintour, Condé Nast editorial director and editor-in-chief of American Vogue, gets her say. Wintour has become Bolton’s close ally and an integral player in the Met’s Gala and spring exhibition. “It would be difficult to do it without her support,” he says. “Anna works out what sponsors would be appropriate for the exhibition. Sometimes I have an idea, and it’s less of a big idea or popular idea, which is not terribly appealing to sponsors,” he says with a laugh. “Anna is extraordinary and supports us in so many ways, but in particular by going out for sponsorship.” (This year’s bankroll is provided by Versace, Condé Nast, and Christine and Stephen A. Schwarzman.)

Wintour’s involvement hardly ends there. She’s served as co-chair 19 times and has turned the Costume Institute and its yearly gala into the global media blitz referred to by many as “the Oscars of fashion.” The documentary, The First Monday in May, perhaps illustrates it best, but there is little that isn’t part of Wintour’s purview. She has final say on everything from decor and seating charts, to the all-important guest list. Her influence is such that the Costume Institute’s space was renamed The Anna Wintour Costume Center in 2014.

There is even a dress code, which tends to echo the broader scope of the show. And while Wintour encourages the celebrity guests to play along, there’s some flexibility. Take, for example, last year’s Comme des Garçons show: most attendees wore your typical socialite glamour gowns but the women who did don the designer — notably Rihanna and Tracee Ellis Ross — made waves for all the right reasons. Another example of this occured at the opening of 2014’s Charles James exhibit, when it was stipulated that male Gala attendees wear “white tie and decorations”, which sent men scrambling to find antiquated garments like tailcoats, waistcoats, wing-collared shirts and white bow ties. So while you may see plenty of celestial-leaning gowns come Monday night, most guests will opt for black tie, a perfectly acceptable — and agnostic — choice.

How this year’s theme was decided

Even after a theme has been signed off by all parties, changes can still happen. Heavenly Bodies was originally slated for 2017, but when Comme des Garçons’s Rei Kawakubo agreed to a career survey, Bolton couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Planning is important, he notes, but so is flexibility. “It’s a balancing act,” he says, choosing something that is at once relevant and exciting to the public, but that also plays to the Met’s curatorial strengths and displays variety.

This year’s exhibition is rather “close to my heart” says Bolton, and it had a significantly longer gestation period than most. It’s a theme he’s been mulling over since “the culture wars of the 1980s”, but that was first pitched five years ago. At the time he hoped to investigate five belief systems represented in The Met’s existing collection – Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Catholicism – but the wealth of material around Catholicism and its influence was so great that he reconsidered, focusing solely on the Catholic canon. “I thought I’d just play to the the strength of the material,” he says.

How this year’s theme was chosen – and why the Vatican got involved

The polemic exhibition will be the Costume Institute’s largest to date, staged not only at the medieval rooms in the museum’s legendary Central Park location, but also at the Anna Wintour Costume Center and its annex at The Cloisters, a rebuilt monastery in Upper Manhattan. Presentation is key, especially considering the delicate subject. “We do a lot of cultural outreach,” explains Bolton of the Vatican’s involvement, which was agreed over two years ago to ensure that the show remained respectful while being appropriately probative. “Obviously there is a sensitivity around fashion and religion – actually around art and religion in general – but that was interesting in terms of tension,” he says. “I don’t agree with censorship, but I do agree with working with the community and working in collaboration, supporting each other. I’ve found things that I think are banal or benign actually aren’t. I’ve learned so much – sometimes the Vatican and I have disagreed, but we’ve always resolved it and we’ve gained a better understanding of each other’s points of view in the process.”

As far as having a favourite of the show, Bolton references a Viktor & Rolf dress which will be shown alongside the two former processional statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus that inspired it. Another personal highlight: a Cristóbal Balenciaga design from 1967. “It’s one of my favorites because in fashion history it’s mythologised or sainted,” he explains, noting how it’s seemingly simple construction (crafted from one seam) belies its innovative and modern nature. “It’s complex but it seems minimalist in a very understated way. The technique and the craftsmanship is breathtaking.”

After all this time picking a theme and building a nuanced and complex argument around it, what does Bolton want his audiences to walk away with? “That beauty can be a bridge between the believer and the non-believer,” he says. He also wants viewers to leave feeling the depth of influence that religion can leave on a person’s life and how that belief system can inform so much of what they do. “The exhibition is about designers who engage with Catholic imagery, symbolism and iconography, but on a much deeper level it is about how much growing up Catholic has shaped a designer’s creative impulses.”

1/11 Andrew Bolton at the ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between’ Costume Institute Gala

Image: Getty

Andrew Bolton and Anna Wintour at the ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between’ Presentation

Image: Getty

Elettra Rossellini at ‘The Metropolitan Museum Of Art Presents: Charles James Exhibition Press Preview’

Image: Getty

‘China: Through The Looking Glass’ Costume Institute Benefit Gala – Press Preview

Image: Getty

‘Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology’ – Press Preview

Image: Getty

‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art Of The In-Between’ Costume Institute Gala – Press Preview

Image: Getty

From the left: Anna Wintour, Donatella Versace, Pierpaolo Piccioli with Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi at the podium

Image: Rex Features

Donatella Versace next to one of the Tiara (1877) of Pope Pius IX in Rome

Image: Rex Features

The mitre (1929) of Pope Pius XI in Rome

Image: Rex Features

Left to right: Evening Dress, Gianni Versace for Versace, Fall 1997-98; Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana for Dolce and Gabbana , Fall 2013-14; Evening Ensemble, John Galliano for Dior, Autumn Winter 2000-2001

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Left to right: Ensemble, Viktor & Rolf, Autumn Winter 1999-2000; Wedding Ensemble, Christian Lacroix, Autumn Winter 2009-2010; Lumiere Evening Ensemble, Jean Paul Gaultier, Spring Summer 2007

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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