Authorship Dispute Erupts Over 'Hair Dress' at the Met's Costume Institute

"You can understand my shock as I was sitting in my favorite cafe last Sunday to realize after being tagged in an Instagram post that my design was in fact in the Met. My collaborator was there standing next to it at the opening."

"Samms explained she met an unnamed designer—Hadari—in 2023, when they were both Sarabande residents. That year, they collaborated on the Hair Dress which she claims Corpus Nervina 0.0 resembles. Last year, the Met expressed interest in buying Hair Dress, and including it in "Costume Art." Alas, those plans fell through by December."

"Over video call, Samms told me Hadari first visited her Sarabande studio shortly after she'd moved in—and promptly noticed her hair-based tapestry, Big Mother (2022). Samms has used hair in her art since she started making it, in 2019. As she recalled, Hadari mused that Big Mother would work well as a garment."

"Instead, she said, Hadari proposed the collaboration for which Samms devised a handmade, hair-based textile for Hadari. "The hair has to be meticulously sewn onto the garment, onto the dress itself, because it's quite an open weav"

A London-based sculptor, weaver, and filmmaker says she helped create a dress shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Art exhibition. She claims the Met attributed the garment entirely to her former collaborator, a New York-based Israeli fashion designer. She says she learned the dress was included after being tagged on Instagram when the exhibition debuted. She describes meeting the designer while both were residents at the Sarabande Foundation and collaborating on a hair-based work she believes resembles the exhibited dress. She says the Met later showed interest in buying the earlier piece, but plans did not proceed. She recounts how the designer noticed her hair tapestry and suggested it could become a garment, leading to her handmade hair-based textile.

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