“Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology”, which opens publicly at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, takes a broader view of the interplay between technology and fashion, at a time when tech companies are marketing their devices as fashionable and fashion companies are eager to be seen as tech-savvy.
In some ways, Manus x Machina addresses the growing push-and-pull between technology and fashion head on, albeit through the lens of two processes that have traditionally held different connotations of value for the fashion industry: the handmade (more valuable) and the machine-made (less so). In his introduction to the exhibition book, Bolton cites Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as inspiration, in particular, the epigram at the beginning and end of the film that reads: “The mediator between the HEAD and HANDS must be the HEART.” Bolton notes that it could have equally read: “The mediator between the HAND and the MACHINE must be the HEART.”
With the 170-piece exhibition, Bolton takes a provocative stance, debunking the idea that something that is handmade is necessarily more valuable or more earnest, and insisting that, whether a garment is made by hand or machine, it’s the heart that counts. “I focused on designers who are known for either fetishising the hand or fetishising the machine or combining the two,” Bolton said. “I wanted to challenge the assumption of the hand versus the machine. One always thinks the hand is representative of superiority or luxury, the machine is inferior. Sometimes, a garment produced by a machine is so much more time consuming and complex.”