The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2025 Costume Institute exhibition, "Costume Art," features 25 mannequins modeled after nine real people with diverse body types and mobilities. Curator Andrew Bolton collaborated with artist Samar Hejazi, who created mirrored faceless heads for the mannequins, and artist Tanda Francis, who modeled features after historical figures like André Grenard Matswa. The mannequins are distributed across two thematic sections: "Disabled Body," featuring individuals such as writer Sinéad Burke, athlete Aimee Mullins, and models Aariana Rose Philip, Antwan Tolliver, and Sonia Vera, along with imagery of the late drag performer Goddess Bunny; and "Corpulent Body," featuring models Jade O'Belle, Charlie Reynolds, artist Michaela Stark, and singer Yseult. The living subjects underwent 3D photogrammetry scanning to recreate their likenesses.
This matters because the exhibition directly challenges traditional fashion display norms by centering non-idealized bodies, aiming to destigmatize disability and corpulence in fashion. By using real people as the basis for mannequins and replacing faces with reflective surfaces, the show invites viewers to see themselves in relation to the garments, fostering empathy and connection rather than reinforcing distance. It represents a significant curatorial shift at one of the world's most influential museums, aligning display methods with the exhibition's core theme of how art and fashion interpret the human body.