Superhero Fashion at the Met

If you were to go home and sew a cartoon superhero outfit with fabric and thread, inspired by the strange and impossibly flawless costumes that they wear, like this:


it would probably come out something like this:



But when real fashion people and costume designers work hard and draw inspiration from "the freedom to fantasize, to escape the banal, the ordinary, and the quotidian" because "Constantly redefined and reworked according to popular canons of beauty, superheroes embody the superlative" their costumes usually turn out much better. Like this:


Or like comics-inspired haute couture. Thus, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features "movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear... reveal[ing] how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body." It'll be up for the next month and a half, until June 22. Check it out before it's gone (pay what you wish to enter).