This installation presents objects from The Costume Institute's holdings that have never or rarely been on view. Included are unusual treasures, such as Elizabethan gauntlets and doublets, along with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century costume curiosities. The selections from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries illustrate the development of the Aesthetic Dress movement through the work of Liberty & Co. and designs by Mariano Fortuny.
Helmet. Spain, 16th century. Straw, metal, silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1932 (32.132)