How Andrew Bolton Went From Aspiring Anthropologist to Leading Fashion Curator

In our long-running series "How I'm Making It," we talk to people making a living in the fashion and beauty industries about how they broke in and found success.

Andrew Bolton might have one of the most unique jobs in the world.

Yes, being a fashion curator is, objectively, cool. But Bolton's position is distinctive in how public-facing it is: Not everyone's intimately familiar with the organizational chart of even their favorite museum, but many, many people know who he is.

As Curator in Charge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, Bolton leads the team that puts on some of the most talked-about and visit fashion exhibitions in any given year — and the ones that correspond to a certain Anna Wintour-orchestrated party. (On the first Monday in May, you'll see him walk up the steps in his signature black glasses and sharp suit designed by his partner, Thom Browne.) He's been there since 2002, when Harold Koda, his predecessor, recruited him away from his native U.K., where he worked at London's famed Victoria & Albert Museum, to be an associate curator. (He took over the "curator in charge" role in 2016, after Koda's retirement.)

Over the past two decades, Bolton's worked on blockbuster shows such as "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" (which he describes as "paradigm-shifting" and really put him on the public's radar), "China: Through the Looking Glass" and "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination". The Costume Institute's latest, "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" — an ambitious, immersive look into the museum's permanent collection — closes on Sept. 2.

Beyond exposing visitors to aspects of objects they might not necessarily experience in a museum setting (such as their scent or the sound they make when they're worn), the exhibition reveals how Bolton's curatorial sensibility has evolved and where it may be headed. Ahead, he walks us through his career and the kismet interactions that have led to trajectory-changing moves, as well where he sees the field going.

Have you always had an interest in fashion? What drew you to it?

I was so lucky because I came of age with the birth of the style magazines like Arena, Arena Homme+, The Face, Blitz. I grew up in a small village in the north of England, and my only real access to fashion was through these magazines. It was a time when Ray Petri from the Buffalo group was really coming to the fore. It was very much about styling real people in the street. And a lot of those people were club kids, basically — people like Stephen Jones and John Galliano. I was very much introduced to that crowd through the club scene in London that I voyeuristically had access to because I went just through those magazines.

My love of fashion really came through the club kids of the early to mid 1980s and through music. It didn't really come from high fashion at that point. It was really street style.

At the University of East Anglia, you studied cultural anthropology. What drew you to that field?

In England, you have to commit to a subject when you apply to university, and you're stuck with it for three or four years. Now, fashion history is a subject one can study, but, back then, it wasn't. I probably wouldn't have done it anyway. I was so used to following an academic career — that's really what I thought I was going to do. Two French anthropologists visited my school when I was deciding what I wanted to study, and I thought it was such an extraordinary subject that obviously wasn't taught at my high school. It was the idea of having access to different cultures and customs. I was more interested in the similarities between cultures than the differences, making comparisons. That was really were my great love of cross-cultural dressing came from.

I was always keen about and loved how one puts oneself together, self presentation and how one can address cultural ideas and mores through the collective conscience. I studied anthropology and did a minor in art history, so it was a nice combination of the two. My introduction to fashion more broadly definitely came through anthropology and making these comparisons rather than differences.

Were you considering getting a doctorate in anthropology and becoming an anthropologist?

I was. After doing my undergrad, I traveled. It was meant to be six months, and it ended up being longer — two years in Southeast Asia. I worked as an anthropologist in Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and I developed a real interest in Indonesian architecture.

When I went back to do my master's degree, I was interested in applying classical rhetorical devices to shamanistic practices. There was a particular shamanistic ritual in Malaysia that I found really interesting... That was what my thesis was on. And I was on track to do a PhD. I was very late delivering some books back to the library, and the library practice was how many days you were late on your books, you had to put in time in the library. I thought, 'Oh, I don't want to do that. I'm going to put them on the shelf and run.' Then, as I put them on there and felt guilty about running and not doing this time, this piece of paper on the shelf fell on the floor — it was an advert for the Victoria & Albert Museum job. I thought 'I might do that, try this out and defer my PhD for a year or two.'

I was lucky enough to get the job, and I loved museum work so much. It was very much [what I loved] about my postgrad. What was nice about that course is that we actually worked with real objects at the Sainsbury Centre. I got really interested in objects and also the way objects can tell these stories. I ended up staying at the V&A.

At what point in those nine years at the V&A were you like, 'I'm not going to go back to get my PhD'?

It was really quick, actually. I loved it immediately.

At that time, it was a curatorial program where you were meant to go from different departments to get experience the whole board. I started off in the glass and ceramics department... I got a lot of in-depth training.... I loved the fact that you could use objects to tell stories and develop narratives, that an object can have a multitude of different meanings depending on the context in which it was used and in which it was presented and interpreted.

A curator's responsibility, which I take really seriously, is to convey very complex ideas in a way that's accessible, understandable and relatable. That's always something I find challenging but also interesting. The New Look, for example — how many essays been written about the New Look? How can we present that differently? A lot of the criticism around the New Look was about the excess of fabric. I thought, 'It'd be nice to juxtapose that with the zoot suit, which was created similar timeframe and [received] criticisms about the excess of fabric.' It's those sorts of things that I find so interesting in museums, that you can make these connections and it gives you freedom to rethink and represent objects in a way that perhaps will make it more understandable and challenging to an audience.

After that curatorial program, where in the V&A did you end up? And how did you eventually develop your specialty in fashion? 

After the ceramics department, where I broke a Roman vase — that wasn't the reason why they transferred me, but maybe a part of it — I applied for a permanent curatorial position in the East Asian department, specializing in Chinese dress. I was lucky enough to work with an incredible curator, Verity Wilson, quite closely. I developed a real interest in Chinese dress, but I was also very much interested in contemporary Chinese designers at that time. I did two of what were called 'fashion in motion,' where we had models walking through the museum's galleries in contemporary clothing, with Vivienne Tam and Anna Sui. It was through working with them and with Yeohlee Teng that got me into fashion department initially. I ended up in the role of a fashion curator through working in the East Asian department, focusing on the contemporary dress of China and the diaspora.

How did you go about educating yourself and becoming a fashion history expert? Were there any resources you really relied on to get that education?

It was really the objects, honestly. I feel there's absolutely no substitute for learning about fashion by looking at the objects.

In terms of the theoretical aspect of fashion, obviously, it was through books and the burgeoning field of cultural theory. In the '90s, when I was at the V&A, it was really the height of cultural theory. It was the birth of Valerie Steele's 'Fashion Theory'. That was the main difference working at the V&A than the Met: Fashion was located within a decorative arts museum and really was the number one, whereas the Met is an art museum and many critics still see fashion as an applied art without the same artistic merit as fine art. Curators like Valerie Mendes and Amy De La Haye were like goddesses and did really interesting exhibitions.

But it all came from the objects, working directly with them and getting the feel for them. In terms of the construction and materiality, there's no substitute from the objects themselves.

Can you walk me through that process, of you coming across an object for the first time? What are you think about? What questions do you ask? 

It's multilayered. It depends on what the object is and what information you're trying to garner from it. Sometimes, it's just historical, pretty much based on the date, the time period, the material and the technique. Sometimes it's very scientific, sometimes it's more cultural, sometimes it's about the wearer, sometimes it's about analyzing a stain and wondering how that got there. It's all of this.

What I've found interesting as I've grown as a curator is, often, in museums, there's a hierarchy, and we tend to prioritize the name designer. For example, if an 1850 dress has a Charles Frederick Worth label, we tend to prioritize that above an item of clothing that has no label and was created by an anonymous dressmaker. Even though that dress may be more superior — it may have a more ideal silhouette, more different fabric — we still prioritize the name designer. Over the years, what I'm finding where I'm developing interest is in analyzing anonymity. How do you develop a creative profile around a garment that's unlabeled or unnamed? It's something I've talked to our conservators about: looking at an object and analyzing all the creative decisions that went into particular components. Analyzing these decisions that the dress maker made for usually herself, you can arrive at more of a creative profile.

Objects are endlessly fascinating, and they tend to tell endless stories. It depends on how you access it, what your frame of mind is at that moment and what you're looking for — whether it's political, social, literary, historical. What I find interesting is analyzing fashion from all these different lenses, because fashion is so connected to the body more than any other art form. It has so many different layers and so many different ways to look at it. It depends on what glasses I'm wearing at that moment in time and what I'm trying to look at.

If someone's interested in getting into the field, is there a specific book of theory that you recommend?

Gosh, it's so difficult to answer that. An open mind is always what I try to encourage.

Aileen Ribeiro, who used to run the history of dress course at the Cortauld Institute, has written extensively on fashion, mainly through paintings. I dip into her work a lot.

If I was to start my career again, I probably would have an internship in our collections department — not the curatorial department — where I'm handling and having access to the objects. You're learning more and more and more about the objects before you can actually develop a curatorial framework you want to position them in.

Going back to the anthropology, what's so appealing about it is the material culture. It was, in a way, a seamless stepping stone to going into museums, because I had an appreciation and an understanding and a feel for objects through the material culture from the different cultures I was studying.

You mentioned how a curatorial sensibility is something that's always in development, but what do you think are the skills that you rely on the most in your job?

In terms of putting an exhibition together, sometimes I might start with an idea — often I do — a thesis and a concept. I sometimes get into sticky waters when I'm applying that concept to objects, and, without fail, if I flip it around and start looking at the objects, every single time, it falls into place. The objects often develop the concept, often in a direction you're not even aware of.

My advice would be never to underestimate the object. Never underestimate the power of the object to lead you. I go through the museum, and I might go past an object that I've gone past for the last 20 years and it hasn't touched me. Then, suddenly, one morning, maybe the light catches it differently, maybe I'm in a different frame of mind, and it speaks to me in a different way. I'm not a hippie, at all — I was born in the seventies, I'd be a punk — but never underestimate an object in terms of how it can affect you in different ways and different times.

Is there an object that you've come across in your career that you think changed either your professional trajectory or the way you thought about fashion?

There are many objects that have done that. I did a show called 'Manus x Machina' in 2016, which was about the hand and the machine — that really came from looking at Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian dress, which was primarily conducted by a machine. To get those incredibly strict lines, a machine was better than hand-sewn. That made me think about the mythology of the hand and the hierarchy that exists in fashion, where the hand is better than the machine, and it's not the case: It's whatever's best to execute and realize your vision. If a machine can get you to the Mondrian dress better than hand sewing, then go with the machine. That made me rethink and challenge these mythologies that still persist in terms of haute couture and ready-to-wear and what's higher and what's better. I was looking at that dress for a very different reason, but that struck me, and it led to 'Manus x Machina'. It's about trying to be as open-minded and magnanimous as possible when you get an object.

Now segueing into your tenure at the Met: You've spoken about how Harold Koda was a big reason why you moved from the V&A to the Met in 2002. What's the biggest lesson you learned from working alongside him at the Costume Institute? 

I was so lucky to work alongside Harold, and I miss him every day. He had a belief in me that I didn't have when I started. I was very young in my fashion career. I think I'd been working in fashion for two years when Harold employed me as an associate curator.

I remember meeting him for lunch, and I was terrified. Yeohlee Teng, who was very friendly with Harold, said, "I'm having lunch with Harold, do you want to join?' And I happened to been here doing another project with Yeohlee. I barely said a word, honestly, because I was so in awe of and so intimidated by him. And, a couple of weeks later, he called up, 'Are you interested in this?' It was like, 'What did you see? I didn't say a word.' It was extraordinary.

I've never come across anybody who can read a garment so quickly as Harold. He would look at it, and he would know immediately how it was constructed and how many pieces created it. He had an extraordinary ability to have a deep, deep, deep, formal understanding of fashion, but also a historical and cultural context for it.

I struggled a little bit when I came here from the V&A because of how fashion was framed within a design and decorative arts museum. Within the Met context, it was focusing very much on the artistry, seeing the artistic merit of a garment and the fact that it can exist in and of itself through its artistic merit, and I didn't need to always contextualize it in culture or history. That freed me up enormously. It freed me up to think about fashion differently and to look at objects differently.

That's what he taught me the most — to just let go of cultural and historical baggage, initially, and look at the object: What does it say and what do you want to learn from it? It was a freedom that he gave me to think differently, more creatively, more poetically, more holistically. And to have the confidence to do it.

Part of your job when you're building out exhibitions or thinking about the permanent collection is acquiring pieces. Can you walk us through your process of deciding that a garment should be in the Met? 

It really varies. Obviously, it varies from the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century. The criteria shifts — 18th century, you're focusing on textiles and silhouettes. In terms of contemporary material, I often gravitate towards pieces that resonate with our collection. There are threads in our collection which reflect culture more broadly and trends in fashion, whether it's classicism, Orientalism or historicism. If there's particular conceit or strategy that a designer is employing that resonates with our collection, I gravitate towards those.

I also gravitate towards designs that completely challenge how you think about fashion, whether it's about the utilitarian or functional aspects of fashion or the pragmatic side of fashion — more conceptual designers like Hussein Chalayan and Lee McQueen. I do gravitate towards designers who try and expand your understanding of fashion and challenge particular aspects of wearability. But I also gravitate towards technicians, like Azzedine Alaïa and Issey Miyake.

You think about fashion, and you have the pole opposites. On one extreme, you have the masters of their craft, people like Azzedine, Issey, Cristobal Balenciaga, Madame Grès, Vionnet — and on the other you have the more conceptualists people like Rei Kawakubo and even like Miuccia Prada, who, in a way, didn't train in fashion, who came to fashion very differently.

Anthropology still informs my curatorial practice, particular anthropologists who developed theories like structuralism, like Claude Lévi-Strauss. I always want to be a post-structuralist, but I think, in my heart, I'm a structuralist. I always go back to Lévi-Strauss. There's something so wonderful about creating structures, connections and narratives. He had these concepts called the 'engineer,' who was somebody who was the master of his or her craft and and of the materials, and the 'bricoleur,' who created objects and concepts. Martin Margiela is the ultimate bricoleur. I think, gosh, that's the two extremes of fashion, and they're the people I gravitate to. They challenge you and they challenge fashion in very different ways, but they're both incredibly relevant to fashion history and fashion practice.

Plurality is one of the defining features of 21st century fashion, so it's difficult to think about one designer, one object that would define a year... What's so brilliant about fashion is it's such an expressive art form. It reflects the zeitgeist. It's very quick to reflect the times in which we live, and the complexity of contemporary culture is what fashion, I think, is responding to.

Mainly, one of the criteria is for it to be exhibition-worthy. It has to stand up in an art museum. That's something [I started thinking about] when I began working at the museum, this idea of, 'Can an object standalone, on its artistic merit within an exhibition context?'

Like you said, fashion is always changing. How is your work, specifically, evolving? Where do you see fashion curation going in the immediate future, and how might that affect people that are entering the field now? 

In terms of my own curatorial practice, we're always known for the big McQueen show or the big Lagerfeld show or the big Rei show. I'd like to quiet things down a little bit, and think about new ways of showing fashion within a museum context. I feel that, when I look back at the McQueen show — obviously, I love the McQueen show, and it was paradigm-shifting for our field — it seems a little old-fashioned now. Often, my curatorial practice has been collaborating with external designers to create an environment, and that environment carries a narrative of the exhibition, in part. The shows I look back on and am most proud of are [like] 'Manus x Machina,' where it was this cathedral-like space, but the objects were prioritized. I'm interested in telling quieter stories.

The idea of anonymity I find really fascinating, of going very much back to the objects and allowing them to lead me and to tell these multi-layered stories... 'Sleeping Beauties' was part of that: I wanted to be able to experience these objects in a more intimate, more personal way, on these different levels, whether it's through touch or sight or smell.

The smell part was very much part of that. Working with Sissel Tolaas, I wanted to capture the olfactory history of the garment. Through her apparatus, we were able to capture all these different smells that related to the person who wore it, but also to the person who looked after it or my colleagues in the Collections department who would've had the fingerprints on it. The life history of an object is so complex, and how we tell the life history in these different ways — whether it's through the senses or whether it's through this idea of anonymity — [is something] I've always been interested in, but haven't always prioritized.

I'm always fascinated when I find an object — a coin that's been in that pocket for 40 years or a dress that has the legion of honor sewn into it. There are so many different angles and ways of looking at fashion. That there's no right or wrong way about it. It's just trying to come up with something that resonates with people, that helps them to think about fashion differently, that expands their understanding and their appreciation of it. To me, it always has to be relevant. The show has to somehow reflect what's going on in society, and it has to resonate with people who are coming to the exhibition. If it's not relevant, people won't connect with it.

"Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" is open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute through Sept. 2, 2024. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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