What department at the Met is dedicated to fashion and textiles?

The Met department dedicated to fashion and textiles is the Costume Institute.

The institute is The Met’s specialized curatorial department for the history and art of dress. Its holdings include clothing, accessories, and related objects spanning centuries and cultures, allowing scholars and visitors to study fashion as design, material culture, technology, and social history.

The department’s roots reach back to the Museum of Costume Art, founded in 1937. That organization merged with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1946, creating the Costume Institute. Unlike a general “Fashion Wing,” the institute is an official curatorial department with its own collection, exhibitions, conservation work, and research programs.

Its annual spring exhibition is celebrated by the Met Gala, formally the Costume Institute Benefit. The gala supplies the institute’s primary annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and operations. A common mix-up is to confuse the Costume Institute with a separate textile museum: textiles may appear throughout The Met’s collections, but this is the department specifically associated with fashion and dress.