Let the holiday weekend begin.

We were up and out early to beat the anticipated crowds at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At 9:55am the MET line, packed with tourists, overran the stately stairs and snaked down Fifth Avenue.

We are New Yorkers and took the entrance less traveled. We were inside within 60 seconds.

The destination was the Costume Institute’s 2016 exhibit, Manus X Machina…Fashion In An Age Of Technology.

The exhibition explores how fashion designers are reconciling the handmade and the machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear.

With more than 170 ensembles dating from the early 20th century to the present, the exhibition addresses the founding of the haute couture in the 19th century when the sewing machine was invented and the emergence of a distinction between the hand (manus) and the machine (machina) at the onset of mass production.

In the past I have swooned over the Costume Institute’s shows including, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, China: Through The Looking Glass, Charles James: Beyond Fashion and Punk: Chaos To Couture.

The Met Ball was so dreary this year that I assumed that Manus X Machina would be uninspired and pedestrian.

Au Contraire.

Manus X Machina is visually spectacular,  featuring overarching scrims that frame the clothing, mood lighting and pervasive medieval music.

The immediate focus of the exhibit is a 2014 haute couture wedding dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel with a 20-foot train. The details of its embroidery are projected onto the domed ceiling.

The scuba knit ensemble stands as a superlative example of the confluence between the handmade and the machine-made.

The pattern on the train was hand-painted with gold metallic pigment, machine-printed with rhinestones and hand-embroidered with pearls and gemstones.

Come on along and Take The Tour:

Each flower on the Chanel coat takes up to 90 minutes to complete.

This is a machine-sewn white silk-wool gazar,  an overlay of white mesh hand-embroidered with clear plastic drinking straws.

The dress has hand-stitched strips of laser cut nude silicone feathers with hand-applied silicone coated gull skulls with synthetic pearls and glass eyes.

The McQueen dress is hand-embroidered with red-orange glass beads, freshwater pearls, pieces of coral and dyed shells.

For his debut collection for Dior, Yves Saint Laurent presented an exaggerated lampshade silhouette with five layers of tulle.

3-D printed dark orange epoxy dress.

The dress is machine-sewn white nylon powder mesh, hand-embroidered with 3-D printed ivory resin and nylon.

 

Head to the MET and revel in the best of haute couture and ready-to-wear.

Metropolitan Museum of Art…Manus X Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology 1000 Fifth Avenue New York City. Open Monday-Thursday and Sunday 10am-5:30pm, Friday and Saturday 10am-9pm.