Highlights from the 2024 Met Gala exhibit: Sleeping Beauty would wake up for these gowns

NEW YORK (AP) — Sure, she was a royal princess and all. But there’s no way Sleeping Beauty — either before or after her nap — ever had quite the fabulous wardrobe that’s been assembled at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” the spring Costume Institute exhibit that debuts at Monday’s Met Gala, is not technically about THAT Sleeping Beauty. The title’s nod to the fairytale is actually a reference to the glass coffins — “let’s be more upbeat and call them cases,” quips curator Andrew Bolton — that hold 16 aging garments now so fragile that they can’t be shown upright. These delicate creatures have been slumbering, like Aurora herself, in the museum’s climate-controlled archives.

But these “beauties” are only a small fraction of the 220 items on display in the nature-themed “Sleeping Beauties,” which Bolton calls one of the institute’s most ambitious shows yet (his previous blockbusters include “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” and “China: Through the Looking Glass”). It’s also special to Bolton because every item on display is from the museum’s own collection.

Another key difference: This show will be a multisensory experience, involving not just sight but smell, sound and touch. Organized into themes of earth, air and water, the show makes use of a “smell artist” who extracted and analyzed molecules from clothing, creating scents visitors can now sniff from plastic tubes. Curators have also captured sounds of fabrics in an echo-free chamber, and used 3D scans to replicate embroidery patterns for touching.

Despite the scale, “I really wanted to make this intimate and participatory,” Bolton said during a weekend tour through the show. In fact, there’s even a mannequin in a gown you can text a question to, and she’ll deliver a ChatGPT-enabled response.

A few highlights:

A late 19th-century, satin-and-chiffon ballgown begins the show, its intricate embroidery of metallic threads, golden beads and sequins evoking sunbeams radiating from clouds. But the “cloud dress” by influential English designer Charles Frederick Worth is doomed, due to deterioration of the vertical threads — “there’s nothing we can do about it,” Bolton says. Except perhaps to recreate it digitally: On a screen nearby, an animated “Pepper’s ghost” illusion that took nine months to perfect shows the gown dancing at a ball. The gown was donated by relatives of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, played on HBO’s “The Gilded Age” by Donna Murphy.

A trio of gowns from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries explores the look of “blurred blossoms” — the effect that makes a dress look like a watercolor or an Impressionist work. But in this gallery you also hear “scroop” — the sound of silk taffeta rustling (a combination of the words “scrape” and “whoop”). The sound was captured in an echo-free chamber at Binghamton University. In another gallery, you can hear the clattering of razor clam shells, captured the same way — accompanying McQueen's dramatic “razor clam” dress, covered with dried and bleached shells.

Christian Dior was influenced by Impressionist painters, and nowhere is this more evident than in the delicate floral embroidery on the famous Miss Dior dress, here a miniature version of the original. It looks just like a chic (and strapless) bouquet of flowers, and if you’re dying to touch it, there’s a small, white replica in 3D printed plastic. You can also run your hands over wallpaper created to match the shape and form of the flowers in the edgy 2013 Raf Simons version of the dress in black, with flowers in leather.

In 1988, Yves Saint Laurent paid homage to Van Gogh’s famous depiction of irises a hundred years earlier, with a glistening jacket celebrated for its embroidery. The museum lays it flat to give a closer view of a garment that took 600 hours of work by artisans who used 250 meters of ribbon, 200,000 beads and 250,000 paillettes (spangles) in 22 colors.

In a show devoted to nature, it’s hardly surprising to find rooms devoted to roses. And you’re invited to smell them, via scents carried in plastic tubes — not simply the smell of roses, but the smell of garments themselves and those who wore them. Bolton explains that Norwegian “smell artist” Sissel Tolaas brought an apparatus that extracted molecules from 57 garments. Two evening dresses, one by Saint Laurent for Dior and one by Lanvin, yielded molecules found in things like almonds and honey, tobacco and hay, and even “a mild sex attractant for moths and cockroaches.”

Yes, it was an Al Pacino movie — but here, it's a gallery devoted to Millicent Rogers, a socialite, heiress and art collector known for her style and how she combined haute couture with regional dress. This gallery focuses on her scent, though, analyzing molecules from her garments — like a 1938 Schiaparelli evening dress in blue silk crepe — to discover her fragrances but also habits and lifestyle, “including what she ate, drank and smoked.”

A prime draw in the “Garden Life” section is a grass coat in which the wool itself has been planted, like soil, with oat, rye and wheatgrass. Right now, the design by gala honorary chair Jonathan Anderson of the label Loewe (a sponsor of the show) looks beautiful and green. But it is dying, because this version cannot be watered, and will be replaced about a week from opening with a version in a different stage of life. Also here: a slew of floral hats from the Met’s copious collection. These, too, have been analyzed for smell — eliciting scents containing hairspray, unsurprisingly, but also chewing gum, cigarettes and other things.

Bolton has said he wants to depict not just nature but shades of emotion — including fear. Which is just what you may feel when you get to the part on flying things: insects and beetle wings, for example. Also, birds. McQueen is said to have adored Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds," and here we have his orange wool jacket printed with black swallows. The creepy part is the animation on the ceiling: first a few black birds, then more, then so many that the space turns an ominous black. The animation, created in consultation with wildlife experts, comprises “14,000 digital swallows," ending with 4,000 simulated feathers. For sound, real swallow calls were recorded, and also the “humming” sound from the 1963 movie itself was captured to create tension.

“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” will open to the public Friday and run through Sept. 2.

For more coverage of the 2024 Met Gala, visit https://apnews.com/hub/met-gala.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Curator Andrew Bolton displays The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala exhibit, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

LONDON (AP) — The host of a news conference about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition fight wryly welcomed journalists last week to the “millionth” press briefing on his court case.

Deborah Bonetti, director of the Foreign Press Association, was only half joking. Assange’s legal saga has dragged on for well over a decade but it could come to an end in the U.K. as soon as Monday.

Assange faces a hearing in London's High Court that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition.

The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to reassurances U.S. officials have provided that Assange's rights won't be trampled if he goes on trial.

Here's a look at the case:

Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the U.S. on 18 charges over Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010.

Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He faces 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could receive a prison term of up to 175 years, though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower.

Assange and his supporters argue he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing and is protected under press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Among the files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

“Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. government,” his wife, Stella Assange, said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.”

U.S. lawyers say Assange is guilty of trying to hack the Pentagon computer and that WikiLeaks’ publications created a “grave and imminent risk” to U.S. intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While the U.S. criminal case against Assange was only unsealed in 2019, his freedom has been restricted for a dozen years.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country.

He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison while the extradition battle with the U.S. continues.

His wife said his mental and physical health have deteriorated behind bars.

“He’s fighting to survive and that’s a daily battle,” she said.

A judge in London initially blocked Assange’s transfer to the U.S. in 2021 on the grounds he was likely to kill himself if held in harsh American prison conditions.

But subsequent courts cleared the way for the move after U.S. authorities provided assurances he wouldn’t experience the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

The British government authorized Assange's extradition in 2022.

Assange's lawyers raised nine grounds for appeal at a hearing in February, including the allegation that his prosecution is political.

The court accepted three of his arguments, issuing a provisional ruling in March that said Assange could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. provided those reassurances three weeks later, though his supporters are skeptical.

Stella Assange said the “so-called assurances” were made up of “weasel words.”

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said the judges had asked if Assange could rely on First Amendment protections.

“It should be an easy yes or no question,” Hrafnsson said. “The answer was, ‘He can seek to rely on First Amendment protections.’ That is a ‘no.’ So the only rational decision on Monday is for the judges to come out and say, ‘This is not good enough.’ Anything else is a judicial scandal.”

If Assange prevails, it would set the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out the case.

If an appeal is rejected, his legal team plans to ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene. But his supporters fear Assange could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.

“Julian is just one decision away from being extradited,” his wife said.

Assange, who hopes to be in court Monday, has been encouraged by the work others have done in the political fight to free him, his wife said.

If he loses in court, he still may have another shot at freedom.

President Joe Biden said last month that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the case and let Assange return to his home country.

Officials have no other details but Stella Assange said it was “a good sign” and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the comment was encouraging.

FILE - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being taken from court, where he appeared on charges of jumping British bail seven years ago, in London, Wednesday May 1, 2019. Assange faces what could be his final court hearing in England over whether he should be extradited to the United States to face spying charges. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)