New Exhibit at The Met Shows Relationship Between Impressionism and Fashion

The fashion in Paris doesn’t just inspire designer runway collections — it also influenced impressionist artists in the late 1800s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently debuted a new exhibit entitled “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity,” which explores the role that fashion has played on the works of Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir from the mid 1860s to the mid 1880s, when Paris emerged as the fashion capital of the world.

The show features 80 paintings from the impressionist era including Monet’s Luncheon on the Grass, Manet’s The Parisienne, Frederic Bazille’s Family Reunion, Renoir’s Lise–The Woman with the Umbrella, and Edgar Degas’s The Millinery Shop. There exhibition also includes period costumes, accessories, photographs, and popular prints that highlights the close relationship between fashion and art.

“The Impressionists were keen to capture the pulse and flux of contemporary life in all its brilliant nuances,” Met curator Susan Stein told Elle. “And they gravitated toward fashion to invigorate threadbare conventions with modern sentiment.”

“Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity” is on display until May 28, 2013.