The progeny of Zeus and Mnemosyne live on, in a new exhibition entitled The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion — a celebration of evolving ideals of beauty and fashion imagery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibition explores the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty, focusing on iconic fashion models and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras. Following a timeline of fashion from 1947 to 1997, the exhibition looks at the power of clothing, fashion photography and the model, to project the look of an era. Just as powerful as their predecessors, models of these times have become more than a means to sell a product, but muses that have, in some way, inspired our dress, our look and some of our attitudes — as a generation.

Guests arriving to the annual Costume Institute Benefit, were greeted by The Muse, a 6-foot-tall beauty perched atop a tall urn, surrounded at her base by hundreds of white roses. From her vantage point, she presided over an evening that saw the Metropolitan transformed into the nightclub El Morocco, a Manhattan institution and magnet for glamour that had its heyday in the 1930s through 1950s.

A zebra carpet (with red trim) led guests from the entrance through to the Great Hall and up the Museum’s grand staircase to The Tisch Galleries, for the inaugural viewing of the exhibition, then to the Petrie Court for cocktails and onto The Temple of Dendur for dinner.

During the dinner, guests were entertained by Kanye West who performed three songs in front of serving Honorary Chair of the gala benefit Marc Jacobs, co-chairs model Kate Moss, singer Justin Timberlake, and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.

Tables for the dinner, which were sold out for several months, ranged in price from $75,000 to $250,000.

The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the 6th of May through to the 9th of August 2009.

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