AngloMania in NYC

AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression
in British Fashion
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Anglomania, the craze for all things English, gripped Europe during the mid-to-late 18th century (and yours truly from about the age of 5.) Through the lens of fashion, the exhibit AngloMania examines aspects of English culture, such as class, sport, royalty, pageantry, eccentricity, the gentleman, and the country garden, which have fuelled the European and American imagination.

Under the guidance of the Met’s Costume Institute, the English period rooms are now infused with a sense of fancy, filled with clothes from the 18th and 19th centuries alongside more whimsical togs by contemporary British designers.

Each room takes an English institution—such as the gentlemen’s club, the garden and the hunt—and examines how fashion honours and subverts tradition.















God Save Vivienne Westwood


As one reviewer wrote in the Economist:

"Anglomania" ultimately is not an exhibition about clothes. It explores the culture that created them. And the British, better than anyone else, have been able to put an entire socioeconomic treatise in the folds of a ball gown.

Well put. So what are you waiting for?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave (at 82nd St)
Tel: +1 (212) 535-7710
Open: Tues-Thurs, Sun 9.30am-5.30pm; Fri-Sat 9.30am-9pm

For more information visit the museum’s website.

(Note: Apologies for posting this so late - perhaps partially out of greed, not wanting anyone else to see it until I do! I will be viewing this much talked about exhibit next week on my visit to NYC, and I highly recommend you do so as well - its only open until September 4th!)