Chanel to Sprouse: A First Look at The Met’s Sandy Schreier Exhibition Catalogue

“Du Barry” Evening Dress, Christian Dior (French, 1905 1957) for House of Dior (French, founded 1947), fall/winter 1957 58; Promised gift of Sandy Schreier.Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photo © Nicholas Alan Cope

On November 27, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will open its exhibition In Pursuit of Fashion: The Sandy Schreier Collection. For the uninitiated: Schreier is one of fashion’s greatest collectors, who over the past half-century has amassed a trove of couture dresses from Cristóbal Balenciaga, one-of-a-kind Fortuny gowns, and kitschy accessories from Karl Lagerfeld and Moschino. She has grown and kept this impressive collection of fashion history in Detroit, where her father worked at Russeks, a department store. Growing up, she often received dresses as gifts from some of the store’s best clients; later, the conservation of haute fashion became her life’s passion. According to some estimates, Schreier owns over 15,000 fashion items—which she never wore but rather kept in an ever-expanding personal museum of fashion history.

Schreier has promised to gift many of her best pieces to the Costume Institute, and 80 of these will be on display at the museum this winter. In advance of the opening, the Costume Institute is sharing a preview of Scheier’s ensembles with Vogue.com, photographed by Nicholas Alan Cope for the exhibition catalog. That her collection should be featured here first is fitting; in an interview in the catalog, she explained that Vogue helped fuel her early fashion obsession. “Every dressing room [at Russeks] had a copy of Vogue magazine. I would sprawl out on the floor in the fur department while my dad was working and look at all the beautiful pictures in Vogue. At that age, I couldn’t even read, but I loved the images.”

In Pursuit of Fashion: The Sandy Schreier Collection opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 27.