The MET Gala Theme, David Bailey’s “Surreal”, and Sarah Moon’s “The Clock”

by Nichole Almanzar

Tags: Clock, Time, MET, Vogue, Surreal, David Bailey, Fashion, Photograph, pillar, pose, aesthetic, gala, theme, met gala

The [Metropolitan Museum of Art] has announced its [gala] [theme] for next year and it is called About Time: Fashion and Duration. Andrew Bolton, Curator for the Costume Institute in the [MET], states that the exhibition “will showcase a century-and-a-half of fashion history culled from its archive and presented along a “disruptive” timeline” and that “it’s a reimagining of fashion history that’s fragmented, discontinuous, and heterogeneous” (Phelps 2019)¹. Alongside the announcement, the article attaches a couple of photographs, which both one of them caught my attention: [David Bailey]’s “[Surreal]” and [Sarah Moon]’s “The Clock”.

To briefly describe the two photographs, “[Surreal]” is a black and white [photograph] of a woman in a black gown. But the black gown is slowly fading and morphing into a [clock]. The subject is standing in front of a pillar (which looks like it is either Roman or Greek architecture) and the backdrop of the subject is plain, almost mimicking a cement wall. Also, the subject in the [photograph] is posing with her hands on her hip and is wearing a white statement necklace. The second [photograph] “The Clock” also has a woman subject. The subject is wearing a white dress and her arms are posed as hands on a clock. Also, there are two distinct circles, one black and one white, that seem to be drawn on the wall. The positions of the circles and the subject’s arms form a clock.

![alt text] (Almanzar_MET1.jpg) ![alt text] (Almanzar_MET2.jpg)

Out of the two photographs, [David Bailey]’s “[Surreal]” attracted me the most. This image has a mixture of the subject’s pose, gown, and the clock. The longer I keep looking at this photo, the more I am noticing new details that pop out. For instance, it seems as if the subject is enclosed by the clock. Another thing to note is that part of the [clock] is draping over a stick-like object causing the clock to become dysmorphic; almost as if it is mimicking the movement of the gown the subject is wearing.

While looking at this photo, I can’t help but think about the relationship between fashion and time in relation to the [MET]’s [Gala] 2020 theme. Part of the theme the Gala wants to explore is the idea that fashion is fragmented and discontinuous and Bolton also claims that “fashion is the present” (Phelps 2019). Although [Vogue] is using this photo which was taken in the 1980s, Bolton’s statements about fashion hold true, both literally and figuratively. The [photograph] is literally showing how the clock can be integrated into a fashion editorial. Figuratively, the [photograph] is making a statement about how fashion and time are one and it can be disjointed, yet somehow they both manage to be present. Also, it is interesting that the image is in black and white because that can be read in a couple of ways. One way is that it is only trying to be an artsy photograph, but another reading of the black and white aesthetic can be a statement about how it is a representation of fashion in a stand-still. In other words, the time of fashion is always constant. However, that constant is always “disjointed”, since it is consistently in the present.

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