FASHION Magazine

Who says all trends come from the street or runway? Ever since Diana Vreeland invented the blockbuster fashion exhibition during her tenure as a special consultant to the Met’s Costume Institute, curators has kept the fashion-as-art conversation going with the re-discovery of forgotten designers or historical eras. “I try to curate shows that have a relevance to what’s happening in contemporary culture,” explained Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met’s newly renamed Anna Wintour Costume Center, to Another Magazine. “The power of fashion lies in its power to transform identity. So I try to fit in ideas with the zeitgeist.”

This year, fashion curators are pulling together a number of different zeitgeist threads. The Met, for instance, will be swapping the safety pins and Vivienne Westwood bondage gear from last year’s “Punk” exhibition for a retrospective devoted to Charles James, one of the first American couturiers who was, according to the late Cristobal Balenciaga, “the world’s best and only dressmaker who has raised it from an applied art to a pure art form.” Known as a difficult genius who made clients wait for their orders—or become so attached to his pieces that he’d refuse to hand them over at all—the designer was a blueprint for some of today’s best talents.

With the rise of Spring 2014’s art-inspired runway trend, what better time to learn about five game-changing fashion curators as well as a hint at some of the 2014 fashion exhibitions that may lead style conversations this year.