Fashion people are, or at least should be, very much accustomed to waiting for what they want.

Cases in point: Marc Jacobs’ refusal to start his fashion shows on time and a meet-and-greet with the Olsen twins at Fashion’s Night Out.

But when ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ opened at the Metropolitan Museum last summer, it spawned the mother-of-all-fashion waits. A total of 5,100 people saw the show on May 4, its first day. On an ordinary Friday in July, I arrived a half-hour before the opening of the museum to a line of more than 200 people outside its doors.

This popularity prompted the Met to extend the show an extra week. Six-hour lines formed, and 80,000 people flooded the show in those seven days alone.

Riding on this success, McQueen’s representatives announced in late August their plans to take the show to London, McQueen’s hometown.

So what made ‘Savage Beauty’ so special?

It could have been McQueen’s suicide in February 2010, which rocked the fashion world and cast light on the immense pressure the industry puts on designers.

Or maybe it was the chance to glimpse into the mind of a tortured yet incredibly talented artist, who used apparel to transform the body into something simultaneously grotesque and beautiful.

And one can’t forget the 10-inch heels resembling armadillo feet that played a prominent role in one of Lady Gaga’s most famous music videos, ‘Bad Romance.’ They had a place of honor at the end of the exhibit.

But fashion as display-worthy art is not exactly a new concept. Since the Met opened the Costume Institute in 1946, it has showcased exhibits of designers both classic and contemporary, such as Coco Chanel, Vivienne Westwood; icons of fashion, such as Jackie Kennedy; and multifaceted displays centered on a single theme, like the symbolism of superhero costumes. Even the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University holds a fashion exhibit every semester, and in the past, it has showcased early 20th-century designs and original Christian Dior pieces from the 1940s.

The four-month run of ‘Savage Beauty’ brought a whopping 661,509 people through the Met’s doors, placing it on the museum’s top 10 list of most-viewed shows after exhibits like ‘Treasures of Tutankhamen,’ with 1,360,957, and the ‘Mona Lisa,’ with 1,077,521.

One thing’s clear: Fashion has finally become more accessible to the masses. Fashion shows are streamed live online and each individual look is available on websites like Style.com immediately afterward. Museum exhibits are taking this one step further by bringing the designs previously relegated to a computer screen to people who would never have a chance to see and experience them otherwise.

Now museums are jumping at the chance to bank on the popularity of ‘Savage Beauty.’ The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology did an exhibit on couture goddess Daphne Guinness, featuring a number of McQueen pieces. According to fashion news website Fashionista.com, even more exhibits are slated for 2012, featuring designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Louboutin and Marc Jacobs and spanning the globe from Denver to London and Paris.

The most anticipated event is the Costume Institute’s next exhibit, ‘Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion.’ According to an article in Women’s Wear Daily, the show will draw parallels between the two very different designers, who designed over 40 years apart, and outline their influences on fashion today.

The popularity of ‘Savage Beauty’ and the rise in costume exhibits appear to have reawakened an appreciation for fashion as an art form. This is one of the first steps in shifting the public’s perception of fashion. Maybe now it will be viewed as a form of artistic expression and not just a frivolous pastime for the rich and famous.

In the meantime, I’m going to book my flight to the U.K. for next year’s McQueen exhibit. One can never enjoy a good show too many times, especially when feathers — and lace and sparkles — are involved.

Julie Kosin is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears every other Monday. She can be reached at jkkosin@syr.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @juliekosin.  

Published on January 29, 2012 at 12:00 pm