There was something different about this morning’s preview of the Metropolitan Museum’s new exhibition at the recently christened Anna Wintour Costume Centre. For a start, there was the long line of press members waiting to get in, bemused by the fact but happy to bask in the sunshine speculating about the ‘famous’ person who was, allegedly, holding things up. Then there was the presence of the First Lady Michelle Obama earlier in the day, in a green leaf print dress by Naeem Khan, there to cut the ribbon and pay tribute to “her friend Anna Wintour” whose annual fundraising Met Gala (to take place tonight, co-chaired by Bradley Cooper, Oscar de la Renta and Sarah Jessica Parker) has helped raise around $125 million over the past 20 years. 

It is the exhibition itself, however, that looks and feels different to those of previous years, especially last year’s “Punk: Chaos to Couture”. There are no smelly CBGB toilets to be found in “Charles James: Beyond Fashion”! Instead this is a quieter and scaled-down affair with some of the most elegant and stunning, technically and aesthetically, evening gowns of the last century on display. Not only can the visitor get close to them, marvel and, very likely, daydream about inhabiting them (stand on your tiptoes and you might be able to position your head on top of one of them using the mirrored walls!) but special cameras scan a select number of dresses so that their inner designs come alive on digital screens. This is as much about dressmaking in all its technical glory and ingenuity as it is about the glamour of the 1940s and 1950s that the Anglo-American couturier helped define. James is, after all, credited by Christian Dior himself for inspiring his 1947 ‘New Look’ collection. “Did you know that the dressmaker Paul Poiret wrote me a marvellous letter once saying, ‘I give you my crown: you do in cut what I have done in color’”, James is quoted as saying. And yet, equally interesting as all the gowns is a circa-1930s eiderdown evening jacket in a glass case that today feels eerily modern – the first puffer jacket, if you may! 

While Vogue’s Hamish Bowles was looking at a wall of Charles James’ drawings and scrapbooks and Bill Cunningham took time off from photographing guests to read through some of the designer’s quotes, the finishing touches to the preparations for tonight’s party were being put into place. The carpets were laid out and some unruly roses were put back into place on the giant replica of a James gown, made entirely of flowers that will greet the guests as they enter the museum’s atrium tonight. More than ever before, they will face strong competition for the night’s best dressed with the mannequins on display inside.