Punk: Chaos to Couture

I didn't not enjoy the Punk: Chaos to Couture exhibit at the Met Costume Institute. It had a lot of hype for such a small space, however. The clothes themselves were fairly interesting (when they could even be called clothes), but the lighting was extremely dark save for huge video screens playing loops of infamous rock concerts. This, naturally, made it very difficult to actually see what one was supposed to be looking at. Also, there was a lot of white noise sounding background music covered with muted layers of indecipherable audio clips and punctuated by long, loud, ear shattering beeps that seemed to be coming from a metal detector. The issue- there were not metal detectors, and the beeping was part of the sound track. Some parts of the exhibit did seem incongruous to those of us born post 1975, such as the graphitized CBGB bathroom in the entryway. Despite this, I enjoyed a great deal of the clothing, and what really made it worthwhile to me was the giant fluffy wigs that each of the mannequins wore- it was a fun element that lightened up a much too serious view of Punk. In reality, this theme is really overdone. Anyway, you should go if you like punk- the main audience of this showing is really those who are devotees of the style itself.

On another note, we saw James Franco, which made the whole week for me.





These pictures really don't do justice to the bad lighting. I guess photographers are good at that. In person it was MUCH more dark.