The exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute, examines punk’s impact from its birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence on high fashion today.

“Since its origins, punk has had an incendiary influence on fashion,” said Andrew Bolton, Curator in The Costume Institute. “Although punk’s democracy stands in opposition to fashion’s autocracy, designers continue to appropriate punk’s aesthetic vocabulary to capture its youthful rebelliousness and aggressive forcefulness.”

The exhibition will feature approximately 100 designs for men and women. Original punk garments from the mid-1970s will be juxtaposed with recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk’s visual symbols, with paillettes being replaced with safety pins, feathers with razor blades, and bugle beads with studs. Focusing on the relationship between the punk concept of ‘do-it-yourself’ and the couture concept of ‘made-to-measure,’ the exhibition will be organized around the materials, techniques, and embellishments associated with the anti-establishment style. Presented as an immersive multimedia, multisensory experience, the clothes will be animated with period music videos and soundscaping audio techniques.

Organized thematically, gallery sections will include Rebel Heroes, which will evoke the New York and London music scenes of the mid-1970s, focusing on iconic punk bands such as The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash. The Couturiers Situationists gallery will examine Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s visual codification of punk through the merging of social realism and artistic expression, featuring fashion and graphics they produced for their boutique at 430 King’s Road in London, including Let it Rock, SEX, and Seditionaries.

Pavilions of Anarchy and Elegance will juxtapose punk designs with haute couture creations, focusing on customization and hand craftsmanship. Punk Couture will explore high fashion’s engagement with punk hardware such as studs, spikes, chains, zippers, padlocks, safety pins, and razor blades. D.I.Y. Style will highlight the impact of punk’s bricolage ethos on high fashion, including the use of recycled materials from trash culture. La Mode Destroy will examine the effect of punk’s rip-it-to-shreds attitude via torn and shredded garments associated with deconstructionist fashions.

Designers in the exhibition will include Haider Ackermann, Miguel Adrover, Azzedine Alaïa, Christopher Bailey (Burberry), Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby (Boudicca), Thom Browne, Hussein Chalayan, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Christophe Decarnin (Balmain), Ann Demeulemeester, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (Dolce and Gabbana), Shelley Fox, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Nicolas Ghesquière (Balenciaga), Andrew Groves, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (Viktor & Rolf), Marc Jacobs, Christopher Kane, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons), Karl Lagerfeld (Chanel), Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Kate and Laura Mulleavy (Rodarte), Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Zandra Rhodes, Russell Sage, Jeremy Scott, Stephen Sprouse, Anna Sui, Jun Takahashi (Undercover), Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi (Preen), Riccardo Tisci (Givenchy), An Vandevorst and Filip Arickx (A.F. Vandevorst), Gianni Versace, Alexander Wang, Junya Watanabe, Yohji Yamamoto, and Vivienne Westwood.