One of the best parts of visiting a museum is exiting through its gift shop.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a pretty great one, and timed to the opening of the Costume Institute’s new show, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” its offering will be bigger and more bananas than ever before. For the first time, the Met Store has invited global high-fashion brands like Off-White, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci, which sponsored the exhibit, to design limited-edition items for “The Camp Collection,” which will be available outside the show.
“Housed in what is more of a pop-up-shop than a standard gift shop, these specialty items have been designed to capture the spirit of the exhibit,” explained Vogue accessories editor, Willow Lindley, who helped bring “The Camp Collection” to fruition.
Virgil Abloh of Off-White was an obvious choice for “The Camp Collection.” Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal essay on the subject that “camp sees everything in quotation marks,” which is certainly one of his hallmarks. But each designer offered a personal interpretation of the over-the-top, hilarious, so-bad-it’s-good sensibility. Jeremy Scott, for example, fashioned diamond earrings out of cardboard. Maison Martin Margiela is selling feather pens. Vaquera designed a gigantic version of those pins you get when you buy a ticket to the museum. And Gypsy Sport made accessories inspired by Coca-Cola cans.
In addition to being extremely fun, “The Camp Collection” also offers a rare opportunity to purchase the products of smaller brands like Vaquera and Gypsy Sport and international ones like Seoul’s Blindness (which made Met-themed face masks for the occasion.)
Below, some of our favorite items from “The Camp Collection.”
Marc Jacobs
Off-White
Vaquera
Molly Goddard
Richard Quinn
Moschino
Blindness
Jane Kaplowitz
The Camp Collection will be available to the public starting Tuesday, May 7, and will launch online at The Met Store starting at 8 p.m..