While some might find “Costume Art” to be a rather literal name for the Met’s next major costume exhibition, much like its “Fashion Is Art” gala theme, the title conveys the event’s main idea with clarity: the inseparable relationship between the dressed body and art history.

Speaking to the forthcoming exhibition last February, curator in charge Andrew Bolton said that he “wanted to focus on the centrality of the dressed body within the Museum, connecting artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form.” Bolton added that instead of placing a primacy on fashion’s “visuality,” “which often comes at the expense of the corporeal,” Costume Art will instead focus on “materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.” The 2026 exhibition appropriately marks the official inauguration of the Condé M. Nast Galleries, a 12,000 sq. ft. space where the Costume Institute’s future shows will live.

“Rather than prioritizing fashion’s visuality, which often comes at the expense of the corporeal, Costume Art privileges its materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.” — Andrew Bolton

If this year’s themes seem rather conspicuous, the Y/Project suit seen across the previews is even more pointed in its statement. Designed in collaboration between the then-creative director Glenn Martens and Jean Paul Gaultier for FW22, the trompe l’oeil design reappropriates a classic men’s two-piece suit as the blank canvas for a halftone nude figure.

For the duration of the show, the naked suit will be positioned next to a 1st–2nd century CE marble statue of Diadoumenos, drawing parallels between their idealized depictions of the “Classical Body.” Other featured garments will be divided into further categories like “The Naked Body,” “The Aging Body,” and “The Anatomical Body.”

With its candid photographic depiction of the male body, the suit stands out from other looks shown in the previews, including the intricately made dresses by Dilara Findikoglu and Rei Kawakubo. Whereas many of the other works showcase interventions in form and a focus on feminine silhouettes, the Y/Project suit instead dials in on optical illusion and an overtly masculine form.

Without closer investigation, it’s easy to write the Y/Project suit off as a contradiction to Bolton’s curatorial intention. Doesn’t the suit focus on fashion’s visuality with its two-dimensional graphics? Visuality indeed takes the front seat in the method of trompe l’oeil—the word itself translates to “fool the eye.”

However, it doesn’t do this at the expense of the corporeal; instead, the suit directs attention back to the body, successfully “connecting artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form,” as Bolton describes. More broadly, it frames the exhibition’s proposal of the “indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear” as a metaphor: the body escapes from beneath the garment and is reasserted onto its surface.

Debuted shortly before Glenn Martens’ departure and the brand’s subsequent closing, the suit was just one of a range of Y/Project FW22 looks that reprised Jean Paul Gaultier’s ’90s trompe-l’oeil prints. The collaborative pieces were a direct reference to Gaultier’s SS96 “Pin Up Boys” collection, where similar muscular halftone torsos were depicted on button-ups (famously worn by Robin Williams).

The duo’s 2022 reprisal took it a step further, with both male and female naked bodies revealed in full, genitalia included. And as if the idea hadn’t already reached its limits, Duran Lantink’s SS26 debut for Jean Paul Gaultier, for lack of a better word, broke the fourth wall with a full-coverage photographic nude print.

For Gaultier, and perhaps his younger counterparts too, the garment becomes a space for provocation and subversion, echoing the illusory work of 20th-century Surrealist artists. In the 1930s, Méret Oppenheim’s jarring “Object” covered a humble teacup in luxurious fur, and Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks depicted solid objects as viscous masses. One could say that these visionary artists and their peers laid the groundwork for Surrealism’s entrance into the realm of fashion. Still, Elsa Schiaparelli was already making her trompe l’oeil Bow Knot sweater years before these works were even completed.

Gaultier may have fathered the contemporary interpretation of nude trompe l’oeil as a motif, but he was certainly not the first designer to use the broader method. In 1927, Elsa Schiaparelli began producing the iconic Bow Knot and other garments with trompe l’oeil details. The Italian designer’s status as a “Surrealist” would only grow stronger when she collaborated with Salvador Dalí on the Lobster Dress in 1937. Elsewhere, Hermès applied a more subtle approach in the ’50s, depicting paint strokes outlining the would-be pockets, collars, and buttons of their dresses.

What was different about Gaultier’s later development was the depiction of nudity. Instead of the illusion being the garment’s qualities, the subject of the garment is done away with completely, and the eye is tricked into seeing right through it. Furthermore, the bodies originally revealed by Gaultier and later Martens for Y/Project weren’t just any bodies; they were muscular and hourglass-shaped — reflecting specific body image ideals. Placed in the context of the “Classical Body” and positioned next to the Diadoumenos marble, it evokes how ancient Greeks glorified the naked human body in their visual culture, especially the male physique.

Knowing the often ironic tone taken by Gaultier and his younger counterparts, you can say these designers are probably less interested in promoting a certain body type and more interested in doing away with these ideals altogether. In a sharp diversion from ancient Greek idealism, Duran Lantink’s trompe l’oeil nudes for Jean Paul Gaultier SS26 weren’t exceptionally sexy but rather average. Instead of muscular, cleanly shaved bodies, Lantink revealed hairy, leaner body types that moved fluidly between male and female models. By viewing the Y/Project suit as part of this meandering timeline, the look becomes just one node in a wider story about the body’s representation in art and costume.

Clothing, in its broadest sense, indeed predates modern conceptions of “art,” a realm that began to thrive in early civilizations where the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter were met on a wide scale. With a primary focus on “Western art from prehistory to the present” in this year’s exhibition, the dressed body can hold various meanings from economic class to gender norms, but so does the naked body.

While the nudity is generally rejected outside of museum walls, inside, representations of nudity are prized, rendered in ancient white marbles on pedestals, and painted with hyperreal dimensionality. The Jean Paul Gaultier x Y/Project collaboration and its broader lineage reversed this dynamic, taking nakedness out of its museum context and into the everyday.

It challenges both attendees and audiences to see fashion beyond surface impressions, drawing them nearer to fashion’s living essence in the body.

Just as last year’s focus on Black Dandyism brought men’s tailoring to the fore, the 2026 Met Gala is expected to set the tone for fashion in the year ahead. Unlike years past, this exhibition isn’t tied to a specific culture or visual sensibility. It challenges both attendees and audiences to see fashion beyond surface impressions, drawing them nearer to fashion’s living essence in the body. In this way, Glenn Martens and Jean Paul Gaultier’s joint creation serves as both a literal and figurative illustration of the theme.

Fashion has historically been siloed from art, deemed as the less profound, more commercial practice below the heightened status of painting and sculpture. By opening the doors to the new Condé M. Nast Galleries — a dedicated Costume Institute exhibition space — the show is poised to make its “Fashion Is Art” gala theme a reality far beyond this coming Monday.