<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Learning about fashion is one of our favorite things to do, and museums are a great place to do it. While style-centric exhibits are held all year long, the summer brings something extra special: the Costume Institute's big show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.\n\n For the last couple of years, the Met has focused on designers, bringing together Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli's archives in 2012 and mounting a groundbreaking retrospective of Alexander McQueen's work in 2011. This time around, they went the thematic route with Punk: Chaos to Couture.\n\n While the exhibit is rooted in the sub-culture ethos that came out of New York and London in the mid-1970s, don't expect to see the kind of duds donned by Sid and Nancy. As curator Andrew Bolton explains, \"From the beginning, I was acutely aware that punk, like any street style, loses its potency when it's presented in the context of a museum.\" So instead of cataloging the past, the show focuses on punk's legacy and its influence on fashion today. And we do mean today\u2014some of the pieces on display just went down the fall runways in February.\n\n The exhibit begins with two faithful recreations of punk palaces past: Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's iconic London boutique, Seditionaries, and the bathroom from famed New York club CBGB. (Yes, there are dirty toilets installed at the Met right now, which is pretty punk in and of itself.) This area is also one of the only places you'll see actual '70s-era pieces, as subversive tees designed by McLaren and Westwood surround a collection of rock 'n' roll-ready ensembles from Burberry, Rodarte, and Balmain.\n\n The rest of the show is organized into several distinct galleries, each showcasing a different DIY style that came out of the punk movement. The first spotlights hardware and is full of fancy frocks embellished with spikes, studs, and safety pins designed by the likes of Versace and Givenchy. But it's not just the clothes that delight&amp;amp;#8212the environment they're displayed in is also a thing to behold. At first glance, the gallery looks traditionally neoclassical with Roman-style columns and statues (or in this case, mannequins) standing in grand archways. Upon closer inspection, however, you'll see the set is made of styrofoam, not marble. How very DIY, no?\n\n There are also galleries dedicated to bricolage (whose highlights include Gareth Pugh's trash bag dresses and a Prada skirt made of pressed metal bottle caps), graffiti (which features McQueen's legendary spray-paint dress), and deconstruction (where a Commes des Gar\u00E7ons army stands alongside an artfully destroyed Chanel suit). A punk soundtrack plays throughout the exhibit, which is punctuated by Nick Knight-directed short films featuring spliced clips of the Ramones, Patti Smith, and other heroes of the era.\n\n The result is a fun fashion feast, a collection of gutsy clothes that beg to be ogled. Or, if you're feeling particularly punk-spired, snarled at.\n\nPunk: Chaos to Couture is on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 9-August 14. Click through to see images from the exhibit!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/gallery/met-punk-exhibit>