Lesley Dill

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Costume Art
 May 10, 2026 - January 10, 2027

The Met Costume Institute Costume Art exhibit is now on view through January 10, 2027. Included in the exhibition is Lesley Dill’s Poem Dress of Circulation, 1992, with words by Emily Dickinson, shown above alongside Dress, autumn/winter 1998-99 by Olivier Theyskens.

From the exhibition text: “Olivier Theyskens's dress translates the body's circulatory logic into a language of external ornamentation. Its "vascular" embroidery of blood-red thread and antique lace maps interiority while red lace and embroidered with red rendering hidden processes of circulation visible. Lesley Dill's 1992 The Poetic Body: Poem Dress of Circulation parallels this approach. While Theyskens employed thread to mimic veins, Dill proposed language as the subject's lifeblood. Her lines of circulation consist of layered paper fragments inscribed with a verse by Emily Dickinson: ‘The healed heart shows its shallow scar.’  Within this framework, the healed heart reflects on trauma's lasting bodily inscription, suggesting that the self emerges through linguistic and metaphorical currents rather than purely biological rhythms.”