Miuccia Prada, Elsa Schiaparelli To Be Featured In Next Year's Costume Institute Exhibits

The best thing for a fashion designer's career? Get an exhibit at the Met.

After this year's blockbuster "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, that would seem to be fashion's new operating logic.

The massive McQueen retrospective brought in 661,509 vistors in just four months, making it the Costume Institute's most popular exhibit of all time.

Now Women's Wear Daily reports that two other major designers will get the McQueen treatment next year: Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli.

While Prada and Schiaparelli may not have the same mystique surrounding their names as McQueen, who committed suicide on the eve of New York Fashion Week just last year, both female designers have large bodies of work to display.

Miuccia Prada has been the creative director of Prada since 1978, when she inherited the Italian luxury goods company from her grandfather. Since then she's transformed the brand with a streamlined aesthetic, creating those ubiquitous black nylon bags that defined Nineties fashion and establishing a quirky, "ugly chic" look for the clothes (which some may just call "ugly," but we're fans...)

The Prada pick means we can expect plenty of celebs walking the Met Gala red carpet in Prada -- perhaps including the Devil In Prada herself, host Anna Wintour?

Elsa Schiaparelli, on the other hand, may have fewer wearers that night. The couturier, who died in 1973, was the queen of surrealist fashion and a collaborator with artists such as Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti.

She also happened to be one of Coco Chanel's biggest rivals.

Her large body of work, which received its own retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2003-2004, includes humorous and mind-bending designs like a high-heel hat, a skirt suit with pockets mimicking a chest of drawers and her famous lobster dress.

Known for her signature color, "shocking pink," Schiaparelli and her designs might be worn today by Lady Gaga.

So who will show up on the red carpet of the Met wearing dug-up, vintage Schiaparelli? We can't wait to find out.

Head to WWD.com to read more about the news.

Comments

[ASHTON CRUZ]

02:50 AM on 08/27/2011

There will never ever ever be another Alex, this lady could hang herself from the Eiffel tower and still she would never come close to MQ's greatness. That said, I wish the best for her. them are huge shoes to fill. I miss you Alex.

[timphotofr]

11:15 AM on 08/26/2011

It's a great idea to have this brilliant designers stage exhibitions at the beautiful Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, I don't think they'll bring in the massive audience that Alexander McQueen had. There are many reasons for the incredible allure of McQueen, and it wasn't just the way he created one unforgettable collection after another. There was a theatricality to his fashion shows that displayed a beautiful yet disturbing modern Gothic aesthetic that captured the times. There was also of course the way he died, which seems in retrospect a fitting ending to a singularly brilliant career. By taking his own life, he stayed true to his deeply tormented romantic ideals.

There will never be another like him.

[DandaPanda]

10:13 AM on 08/26/2011

The Pope wears Prada