Tilting the Lens and the Met – a story of accessibility and representation in ‘Costume Art’

In November 2024, I received an email from Andrew Bolton, the Curator in Charge at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

I first met Andrew in the restaurant at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London during the press preview of his touring exhibition, ‘Savage Beauty’. That was over 15 years ago, and in the time since, I have had the privilege of spending considerable time with Andrew and the wider team at the Costume Institute – always curious, always advocating, always learning. 

Andrew’s email read, “I’m working on our spring 2025 and spring 2026 exhibitions. The latter is focused on fashion and the aesthetics of embodiment. I’d love to speak with you about it at some point.” That email led to many, many conversations. 

To rewind a little, The Costume Institute, is a curatorial department of the Met focused on fashion and costume design. And to rewind even further (this is relevant, I promise) the Costume Institute began its life called the Museum of Costume Art, a venture by Irene and Alice Lewisohn, as they worked in theatre and developed an archive of costume, set and stage design. The Costume Art Museum was expanded into the Met in 1946, but remained independently run until 1959, when it became a curatorial department.

From 1946 to now, the Costume Institute is solely responsible for fundraising to cover and fund the department’s operating expenses. It is the only curatorial department at the Met required to raise its own operating funds. The first Met Gala was designed and hosted in 1946 to fund these operating costs, and it has grown from there. 

The 'Costume Art' exhibition

The 2026 exhibition ‘Costume Art’ came through many iterations over that time, and is now open in the Condé Nast Galleries at the Met, celebrating seven types of body, including a section on the ‘Disabled Body’ and how it shows up in both fashion and art. 

Over the past 18 months, Tilting the Lens has been proud to support the Costume Institute with a number of key objectives:

• Consulting on the curation of the ‘Disabled Body’
• Consulting on the Costume Art catalogue
• Training for the volunteer guides
• Supporting greater accessibility at the exhibition’s private opening and fundraiser, the Met Gala. 

On a personal level, I also contributed to the exhibition via:

• Participation in mannequin development, and 
• Donating two pieces from my wardrobe to the Costume Institute’s permanent collection.

‘Costume Art’ is an exhibition that underscores the validity of fashion as art, if it was ever in question. It also demonstrates how, unlike many other forms, an argument could be made that fashion exceeds art, due to the transforming nature of embodiment. But what does this mean? In plainer terms, when a person wears fashion, it evolves from being an object, a piece or a garment, and becomes movement, and evolves based on the wearer. This is both what makes fashion art, and extends beyond it.

The Costume Institute has consistently explored the body and fashion, but this exhibition had two specific objectives: the first is to draw on the artistic endeavours of the Met’s other curatorial departments, creating a specific link between the Costume Institute’s collections, and more traditional work such as sculpture, fine art and more. The connecting tissue is the body. The abstract body, the Disabled body, the corpulent body, the inscribed body, the anatomical body, the aging body, the vital body, and the mortal body are centred in the Costume Institute connecting to relevant artworks and objects from across the museum.

The second objective was to increase the representation of bodies, and in turn, mannequins at the Costume Institute. In 2023, curator Mellissa Huber’s exhibition, “Women Dressing Women” commissioned a mannequin to be made of model, Aariana Rose Philip, and acquired the mannequin made of my body from Proportion London, first created for the Body Beautiful exhibition at the National Museums of Scotland. 

The Mannequin

Back in 2018 the first mannequin of my body was made through a laborious casting process that took several days for the Body Beautiful exhibition. I had to stand still in one pose, as my body was covered in casting material to make a mould, to then make a mannequin. This is one of the first mannequins of a person with dwarfism to exist, and beyond Edinburgh it has also been on display in the V&A in London, the Met New York, and is about to be included in an exhibition at the V&A in Dundee. It has also acted as a canvas for young fashion designers creating adaptive collections, specifically for little people and those with dwarfism.

A key limitation of this mannequin was the inflexibility of the process and in turn, the pose. If a curator needed a mannequin to be positioned in a specific way, the flexibility and range was limited. For ‘Costume Art’, the Costume Institute sought to trial a different process that would give almost any option.

In August 2025, myself and Laia Cargol Martinez travelled to Brooklyn for ‘photogrammetry’ at New York Capture’s studio. Photogrammetry is the science of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery. In practice, it was a cylindrical machine, with cameras placed three inches apart, covering the entire surface area. There was a small space to step into, and in the centre, every part of your body was in the centre of a lens. 

It was an intimidating process. Standing in my underwear and a pair of shoes that didn’t fit, I was encouraged by the team at the Costume Institute to move my body into positions that could be used in this exhibition or a future one. Seeing your body from all angles and perspectives is an act of empowerment, but starts with the need to unpick, challenge, and silence the perspective that with bodies, there is a norm, an ideal, a desirability. We are all the norm, the ideal, and desirable.

With the scans complete, the artist Frank Benson transformed the imagery into “digital clay” and the mannequins were made by Bonaveri in Italy. For this exhibition, each mannequin has a mirror in place of a face, so that visitors can see themselves in the bodies, the garments and the objects. 

The Disabled Body

For Tilting the Lens to consult and support the development of this section of the exhibition was a significant challenge. Our remit began with the title of this thematic section. We were specific and explicit in our naming and referencing, as while the etymology of the words disability and disabled often focus on absence, lacking, or deficiency, we were clear that in our naming of the Disabled Body, it is an exercise in Disability Pride, and an act of continued reclamation. In naming this section ‘Disabled Body’ we wanted Disabled people to feel welcome, to be invited, and to see themselves in the pieces and objectives, and to challenge the absences that continue to exist. 

One exhibition alone cannot include all perspectives, all bodies, or all Disabled bodies. That continued exclusion cannot be excused. Instead, it must create an urgency for museums and cultural spaces to continue to invest, expand, partner, and collaborate.   

In ‘Disabled Body’ fashion objects and garments are paired with artworks and objects from other curatorial departments across the Met. This pairing of work creates opportunity for new conversations. For example, the exhibition features a four inch marble statue of a person with dwarfism from 332-150 BCE, made close to 2,300 years ago. The sculpture signifies the cultural honor of dwarves in ancient Egyptian society. It is paired with my mannequin, and a Vivienne Westwood t-shirt from 1978, worn as a dress on a little person’s body. Standing in front of the two pieces together, it provokes questions and thoughts – why in one artistic medium is this body-type visible and valued, and in another, that visibility came later, and remains rare? Disabled bodies often had a much earlier presence and prevalence in other artforms, than in fashion. 

For ‘Disabled Body’, Tilting the Lens researched design archives for disability-related collections, and lived experiences of designers. Throughout the curatorial process, we suggested key pieces, pairings and ensured that this section of the exhibition was as broad as possible. We also supported the framing and context of this section, ensuring that themes of disability rights, disability pride, and Disability Justice were centered. This practice extended to the exhibition catalogue too. ‘Disabled Body’ also pairs artworks like Street, a photograph by Nolan Trowe. It’s an image taken from a lower height, looking up at the display screen of the inside of an elevator. The screen reads “Street”.

Street is paired with a pair of Levi jeans made in partnership with the Disabled designer, Helen Cookman, and a denim jumpsuit by Lou Dehrot and Louise Linderoth. The jeans are presented on mannequins of Antwan Tolliver and Sonia Vera, both wheelchair users.

This section of the exhibition also features the Disabled designer, Sugandha Gupta, and features mannequins modelled from the bodies of Disabled models, Aariana Rose Philip and Aimée Mullins. It showcases designers, painters and sculptural works that reference Deafness, Blindness, physical disabilities, neurodivergence, and mental illness. It also reveals the gaps that exist in fashion with designers identifying as Disabled, and pathways for Disabled fashion designers to succeed. 

For transparency, Tilting the Lens has a scholarship programme with Parsons School of Design – The Parsons Disabled Fashion Student Programme is a fully-funded scholarship to create a pipeline of Disabled fashion talent. We are about to enrol our third cohort of students.

It’s likely that some people who will visit Costume Art, will not have a lot of prior knowledge about disability. The purpose of including the Disabled Body in this exhibition is to communicate that disability is part of the human experience. We are all likely to experience disability and a Disabled body, particularly if we have the fortune to age. Historically, to be Disabled, was to be less than others, to be worthy of pity or shame. Costume Art rejects these ideas and instead, honours the beauty and validity of the Disabled body.

Training for Volunteer Guides

The Costume Art exhibition will be on display until January 2027. A typical Costume Institute exhibition attracts somewhere between 300,000 and 750,000 visitors (WWD 2025) and the volunteer guides support those visitors with brilliant, informative and engaging tours. The guides go through a number of training sessions in preparation for the exhibition opening. 

Curators will often host a session about the objects in the exhibition, providing context for the chronology, the background rationale and how some objects came to be acquired. To support the guides in feeling greater confidence in discussing ‘Disabled Body’, Tilting the Lens designed and hosted a virtual training program.

The training covered: 

• The models of disability; from eugenics to Disability Justice. With historical understanding of how and why disability is framed and considered, it helps us explain the current context and language. 
• Disability terminology and avoiding euphemisms. This section of the exhibition is proudly called ‘Disabled Body’, and we wanted to ensure that guides felt confident using disability-first language, and equipped to explain why, if necessary.
• An introduction to visual descriptions. The Met’s education and accessibility teams are excellent and they have put together a range of accessible programming and tours for Costume Art. But, if you’re a Blind person or someone with low vision, or if you’re a little person and at the back of a tour, brief, visual descriptions create a fairer experience as you move through the space.
• Supporting guests’ access needs. Using potential visitor profiles, we practiced scenarios where the guides’ role was to remove barriers to support visitors through the space. If someone needs to sit and rest, how do we direct them and support them to come back to the tour? If a person is over-stimulated, where can they go to de-compress and feel more regulated? If a visitor is lip-reading, how should the guide present the tour in the most accessible way? 

The training was recorded and will hopefully be a useful tool for guides throughout the exhibition run. We know that one training session cannot cover all topics, and for training to be most useful, it has to be followed by action and practice. We will continue to be available to the guides for the duration of the exhibition for queries, and to help solve barriers and challenges as they arise.

The Met Gala

I have been advocating for a more accessible Met Gala for almost 20 years. The Met Gala is a fundraiser, a party, and over 80 years, has evolved to become a litmus test for who and what is accepted and valued in fashion. That can be both a positive and a negative, but for many Disabled people, particularly those with physical disabilities, climbing the steps to the Met Gala has always been inaccessible. It has meant that very few physically Disabled people have attended the Met Gala. To the best of our knowledge, it’s Aimée Mullins, and me. I attended the Met Gala once before in 2019.

If Disabled talent can’t access the red carpet and have their photo taken, it’s unlikely fashion brands will sponsor their ticket and invite them to the Gala. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, why can’t we make it accessible? 

Challenges in built environment access

The steps at the front of the Met Museum were designed by Richard Morris Hunt in 1975. They replaced a narrower staircase and today, they are 13.5 feet high and 154 feet long. In 1986, The Met was designated a National Historic Landmark. There are approximately 2,500 National Historic Landmarks in the US, and in theory, they can be altered to be accessible, but under the Americans with Disabilities Act, historic and protected buildings do not have to be compliant if: “the requirements for accessible routes (exterior and interior), ramps, entrances, or toilets would threaten or destroy the historic significance of the building or facility.” – US Access Board. 

I am not an architect, but I spend a lot of time with built environment experts, and at Tilting the Lens, moving beyond compliance in this space is one of our key services. I’ve always known that:

• Any attempt to ramp the steps, (i.e. level a section of the steps to include a ramp), would potentially meet the threshold for ADA non-compliance. But even if it didn’t, the incline of a 13.5 feet high ramp would be too steep and too dangerous for a wheelchair-user. 
• There is a handrail on either side of the far left and right of the steps. These rails are not robust enough to hold a stair lift and even if it were to work, this often isn’t a preferred solution. 
• My suggestion has always been to extend the tent. Typically at the Met Gala, the width of the tent spans two city blocks; 82nd to 84th street. It covers an entry point, check-in and the stairs up to the main entrance. Yet, the Met has a step-free entrance on 81st street. It’s clearly labelled and used by visitors daily. Why can the tent not be extended to include the 81st street step-free entrance? Yes, Disabled guests will still not be able to climb the steps, it will not be an equal experience, but they will be able to attend and participate in the red carpet moment. 

An accessible entrance

In November 2025, I received an email from the team at Vogue that said they were once again putting together a small host committee who reflect the exhibition theme, and that “Anna is hoping to include you”.

I must admit, I didn’t respond straight away. 

I knew that this role was an opportunity to leverage change. I couldn’t be there if there wasn’t meaningful access. This was another opportunity to ask for what I and other people need. If you’ve ever received an email from me, you’ll know that they’re usually lengthy, explanatory, optimistic and challenging. So I started drafting and redrafting:

“… I feel a sense of responsibility in what my presence at the Benefit, and even more, my inclusion in the Host Committee could represent. I’m very conscious that in 2019, great consideration of my accessibility needs were taken into account by Vogue, the Met, and Gucci. In the proceeding six years, I’ve invested my time and energy to ensure that change is not just for me. The stairs leading up to the Met is a constant and very visual reminder that for many Disabled people, the Met Gala is not for them. I would like to work with you to see if a solution can be found to ensure that Disabled people can attend, or at the very least, aspire to attend.

I understand that the Metropolitan Museum is in a protected, historic building and adding a ramp to the stairs is not feasible from both a legislative and finance perspective. But, perhaps there is a way to consider the adjacent step-free entrance as a secondary route, one that is as aesthetically pleasing, as engaging, and as welcoming as the stairs.” 

And so began many conversations. First with Vogue, and then with the Met. In February 2026, it was confirmed confidentially that the tent would be extended to include the step-free entrance at 81st Street. Disabled guests would arrive, queue for the red carpet, be interviewed by the live-stream, have their photographs taken on the flat surface and go left, rather than up the stairs, to the step-free entrance. Disabled guests would then use the elevator to reach the new fashion galleries and join all other guests. 

This is not a perfect solution, but it is progress. 

The Costume Institute’s permanent collection

One of Tilting the Lens’ principles is building legacy memory. We want change and the tools for change to not just live with one person, or one department in a company or organisation, but for it to be part of the fabric in how things function long term. This is important, because if that catalyst is taken away for any reason, everything stalls. That’s not the fault of the person, but a failure of the institution. Our work is about cementing that in every project that we do.

This project was no exception. 

The Costume Institute has a permanent collection of over 33,000 objects. As per the Costume Institute’s website, the permanent collection is open for research appointments by scholars, graduate students, doctoral students, and designers in relevant fields. In thinking about how we expand fashion academia, support doctoral students to study disability and design, and encourage designers and students to examine the ableism in design systems, the permanent collection must represent and provoke these ideas. I’m really proud to have donated two pieces from my wardrobe to the Costume Institute’s permanent collection for this very purpose.

I donated the Burberry trench coat and crown that was cut and photographed by Tim Walker for the cover of the Business of Fashion’s Age of Influence print issue in 2018. Along with a white cotton Alexander McQueen dress and leather belt that was photographed by Adama Jollah for British Vogue’s May 2023 Reframing Fashion issue, with Tilting the Lens as consulting editors. 

I know that for some, fashion is frivolous, expensive, and harmful. It can be all of those things, and it is also an institution that shapes culture, society, and is an extraordinary art form. It has an urgent responsibility to do better for people and the planet, but it is also an industry that we cannot escape from. We all wear clothes.