Dressed to Kill tour of the Metropolitan Museum

Come learn about the history of fashion and beauty standards through the ages, on this uncut version of one of our best-loved Met tours!

What is the most important theme in art, over all? An audacious question—but there is an answer. The biggest theme is human beauty.
But what does human beauty consist of, in art? Regular features, clear complexion, beautiful eyes? Actually, on the whole, the individual features of the beautiful person occupy a small amount of attention in their depictions.
What do they focus on instead? Fashion and beauty standards—the beauty ideals of their cultural moment. On the whole, depictions of beautiful people focus on their clothing, their hairdo, their makeup, the ways their underwear restrict and reshape their bodies. In art (if not in life?) fashion is beauty, and beauty is fashion.
And thus, the collections in an art museum contain extraordinary histories of beauty ideals and fashion. And what museum could do so better than the Met? From Roman Imperial hairdos to preColumbian ear spools, from Renaissance shaving and plucking to 18th century big hair, from hoop skirts to codpieces to beauty marks—to whatever any culture has considered beautiful, for men or women—the Met has it all.
And this is the tour to see it on! The Dressed to Kill tour has been one of our most popular tours since we launched it 5 years ago, but the online format allows it to much bigger and more varied. So here it is: Dressed to Kill, the uncut version.