The Costume Institute’s fall exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) pays homage to female creation. Women Dressing Women is a statement of intent that starts with the exhibit’s very first panel. Women designers, artisans and artists have covered the female universe with their designs and different visions of women, always making them protagonists, sometimes turning them into objects but never passive subjects when it comes to clothing. Over 80 outfits from the Institute’s permanent collection are on display, and the exhibit covers the fashion industry chronologically, artistically and commercially. The pieces represent the fashion industry’s two main centers, Paris and New York, including names and labels that connect haute couture and street fashion, and the most refined traditions of the Old Continent, American avant-garde and utilitarianism.

The exhibition, which opens on Thursday and will remain on display through March 3, 2024, starts with a selection of black and white photographs, projected in a loop, showing the work of dressmakers, tailors and seamstresses at anonymous workshops between 1907 and 1962. There are also images of the first timid tests for a client and the first private fashion shows in salons at a time when designers didn’t have name recognition, let alone the planetary fame that they have acquired in recent decades (to say nothing of the attention they’ve received in recent years from celebrations like the great annual fashion exhibit at the Met and the museum’s fashion gala, the event of the spring).

This black and white tribute features the precursors of over 70 women designers, who bring dreams to life with their needles and thimbles. The exhibit traces the lineage of the last century’s most influential women-led fashion houses (although only a couple of them remain today, the House of Dior and the House of Chanel). It features the work of pioneers like Adèle Henriette Nigrin de Fortuny and her Venetian textiles; the exquisite Madeleine Vionnet; Spanish designer Ana de Pombo, one of the last at the French fashion house Paquin (1891-1956); and Elsa Schiaparelli, who led her own brand and was perhaps the first designer with name recognition. Indeed, the latter had an exhibition at the Met dedicated to her in 2012, in which she engaged in an imaginary dialogue with her famous compatriot, Miuccia Prada. Big names (Chanel, the aforementioned Miuccia Prada, Marchesa, Rodarte) do appear in the exhibit, but it highlights unknown women and those time has forgotten, as in the selection of ethereal creations from the first decades of the 20th century.

The figure of the designer known by name was forged in the workshops where seamstresses, milliners, apprentices and tailors toiled for decades. As an introductory panel accompanying a selection of anonymous photographs notes, “in the centers of French and European fashion, women’s right to dress other women was a slowly won privilege,” since men dominated the industry. It took a long time for female professionals to gain a foothold, something that happened with the deregulation of the guilds. In the United States, however, this vocation was seen as a natural, industrious extension of domestic responsibilities: after all, sewing was an inherently female occupation.

At the press preview of the exhibit on Monday, Max Hollein, the director of the Met, explained that fashion created by women has helped empower women, as well as the designers themselves. “This exhibition invites reflection on the vital contribution women have made to fashion from the early 20th century to the present by amplifying historically undervalued voices and celebrating the celebrity they have achieved. The garments on display exemplify the countless women whose contributions were, and continue to be, the lifeblood of the global fashion industry as we know it today.”

Andrew Bolton, the world’s most influential fashion curator, senior curator at the Costume Institute and the righthand man of Anna Wintour (the all-powerful fashion Vogue editor and architect of the Met fashion gala), also spoke at the press preview of the exhibit. He noted that “women have been central to the success of the Costume Institute since its inception. Its founders include several inspiring women; that’s why the Institute remains dedicated to celebrating women’s artistic, technical and social achievements. They are part of fashion history.”

For Mellissa Huber, associate curator at the Costume Institute, the fall exhibition offers an opportunity to “learn the crucial stories of groundbreaking women designers who played a pivotal role in the conception of fashion as we know it. Women’s contributions to fashion cannot be quantified, but our intention with this show is to celebrate the Costume Institute’s permanent collection, which represents the rich history of Western fashion.” As Hollein emphasized, fashion is a symbol of female power and emancipation but also the result of tremendous collective work. Historically, conceptually and commercially, fashion is also the triumph of social progress, a powerful vehicle for women’s social, financial and creative autonomy. As Ted Pick, the co-chairman of Morgan Stanley, a sponsor of the exhibit’s luxurious catalog, points out, “the milestone that three Parisian haute couture fashion houses—Chanel, Dior and Iris van Herpen—are run today by powerful women” cannot be overlooked.

“The common thread that connects different generations of professional women reveals how subsequent generations have built on and expanded the legacy of their predecessors. The exhibit reflects the intergenerational dialogue between these designers in historical perspective and the talented women who worked with them from a contemporary point of view,” explains Karen Van Godtsenhoven, a co-curator of the exhibition. Indeed, to cite just one example of these silent conversations between the pieces on display, there is the direct thread between Fortuny’s characteristic pleating and Comme des Garçons’ textile origami; the austere scenography makes the connection stand out and reveals the continuum mentioned by the experts who organized the show. There’s a similar connection between Vivienne Westwood’s conceptual punk and the groundbreaking dress with pieces of metal inserted in silk with which the house Vionnet reinterpreted the syntax of ancient Greek ceramic painting in 1924: tradition as modernity and vice versa, along with the eternal aspect of fashion and art.

Indeed, to see one example of this legacy, look at the heads of the mannequins wearing the dresses in the pioneers’ room (the first room in the exhibit): they are topped with the enduring forms of classical Greek columns.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber in New York in August 2023. Gotham (GC Images)

In the image, Justin Bieber is the personification of the scumbro trend, defined by Vanity Fair columnist Kenzie Bryant, who put together the words “scum” and “bro.” This trend defines the aesthetics of celebrities such as Pete Davidson, Tom Holland and Machine Gun Kelly. What defines this hectic style is an absolute lack of aesthetic coherence; they want us to know that they walked out of their houses wearing the first thing they saw in their closets. What is often striking (and incomprehensible) is that scumbros usually have a partner (like Hailey Bieber) who looks exactly the opposite; their outfits are neat, stylish.

“The strategy, in the end, is that celebrity couples dress alike, something that is accentuated when there are brands involved,” Leticia García, chief fashion editor of the fashion magazine SModa, says. “Everything is marketing, and the construction of the celebrity image is nothing more than advertising. The next step is the construction of the image of the couple, something that seems to me to be a way of stripping people of [their] self-identity.”

Looking disheveled on purpose

Going out looking messy and untidy — compared to one’s partner — is a strategy to attract attention, according to Pedro Mansilla, a sociologist, journalist and fashion critic. This is particularly true when we talk about celebrity couples, Mansilla adds. Famous men tend to do it when they are dating “women who have achieved notoriety on their own merits.”

Pete Davidson dressed to go to a premiere in 2022. Jamie McCarthy (Getty Images)

Mansilla points out that this happens primarily in heterosexual couples and adds that it could be due to the so-called bad boy attraction, with his characteristic sins: carelessness, unpunctuality, laziness, etc. There is nothing more attractive than a guy who — due to his status, and thus, power — can dress whichever way he wants, says Mansilla. In other words, according to this new trend (very ad hoc with the Silicon Valley power players who went from nerds to billionaires at the beginning of this century), for a powerful man, nothing is more exciting and vindicating than to dress as if he were powerless.

This style is, in fact, the result of an aesthetic decision. Actor Adam Sandler considers himself, perhaps, the last great purist of the scumbro style, someone who dresses this way out of sheer carelessness. When asked in an interview how he would define his aesthetic, he replied: “A man who opened a suitcase and threw something on.” The difference between Sandler and others — such as Justin Bieber or Pete Davidson — is that he is probably the only one who dresses this way in the most natural way possible. Nowadays, scumbros wear streetstyle brands such as Palace and Supreme, as well as clothing from big brands l Gucci, Versace, and Prada. Their style is more about being perfectly imperfect.

Adam Sandler well-dressed for the release of his own movie in 2022. Dia Dipasupil (Getty Images)

Proof that whoever dresses like this does not do it out of laziness, but with absolute intention, is that when a user wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that Diplo was starting to “look like a dude that sells you bad weed on the Venice boardwalk,” the musician posted a screenshot of the tweet on his Instagram profile along with the caption “Goals achieved.” Even Esquire magazine published an article in which it pointed out that celebrities dress “like teenage weed dealers.”

Brands like Balenciaga and Acne Studio have seized on this supposedly chaotic aesthetic. And, as Kyle Dinkjian — who runs the Instagram account JonahFits, which analyzes Jonah Hill’s looks — explained to The Wall Street Journal, this style inspires men who “don’t look like movie stars to get into their own fashion and make it their own.”

“People are tired of the ‘everything goes’” mentality, Pedro Mansilla counters. “Uglysm still dominates, but the sartorial order will prevail at some point. The anti-establishment style is showing signs of fatigue. The dandy is starting to come out of the closet,” he adds.

A new type of narcissist

But do these men really not care about their style at all? “When someone claims that fashion is banal and superfluous, it’s a sure sign that they are a person who thinks they are above the rest,” says García. “People dress not only as a way of expressing themselves, but also out of respect for others.” We must differentiate here, however, between two types of scumbros. One of them is Justin Bieber, who knows about fashion, has been nourished by it and has collaborated, in fact, with big brands such as Calvin Klein. His scumbro style is actually worth thousands of dollars. On the opposite side of the spectrum is something like Adam Sandler, who many Internet users defend for being someone who dresses according to his comfort and his own style. He is true to himself. Authentic.

Pete Davidson dressed to go on television in 2021.NBC (NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“A trained eye should always distinguish those who don’t care how they are dressed from those who do care, but pretend they don’t,” Mansilla explains. “These are the most interesting because, in principle, they set the upward trend. We have become so bored with seeing the integrated that we wish to see the apocalyptic, to use Umberto Eco’s terminology.”

It seems that stylistic laziness is less and less about laziness and more and more about strategy, especially when a closer look at their closets reveals that every garment and accessory is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. If silent luxury has taught us that even the most basic white T-shirt can be a sign of social status, styles like scumbro are not precisely symptoms of passivity, but of careful decisions. Today’s narcissist has mutated: he is no longer just Christian Bale in American Psycho, he has also been spotted wearing sweatpants, a Hawaiian shirt and Crocs.