The muses of time
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‘The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York until August 9, 2009. Above: ‘Naomi Campbell in Geoffrey Beene’, Vogue, June 1990, photograph by Peter Lindbergh, courtesy of Peter Lindbergh
Every fashion designer worth his salt has a 'muse' these days, usually in the form of a model. This exhibition is dedicated to these superhuman creatures who, together with designers and photographers such as Cecil Beaton, David Bailey and Peter Lindbergh, have charted - and indeed shaped - our ever-shifting ideals of style and beauty. From Forties glamour pusses and sixties poster girls to nineties Amazonian supermodels (Naomi Campbell, above) and waif-icon Kate Moss, it's a beauty pageant through the 20th Century. To some these women are aspirational, to others merely overpaid clothes-horses; either way, many are now considered not just muses but the faces of entire generations.







