Dressed to Kill: Fashion & Beauty through History at the Met Museum
A fun & informative live online tour (w/ Q&A) on changing styles of beauty and the astonishing lengths to which people have gone to attain it
Cost: $12. Please note that this fee helps keep our small business going during the crisis so we can get up and running right away when it is safe to bring people together again in person.
2 TYPES OF TICKETS:
Buy a ticket to attend the LIVE online event or
Buy a ticket to watch the RECORDED event when it is convenient for you: dressedtokillmet.eventbrite.com
Can't make the live event? Buy a ticket for the recording and watch the event in your own time! Details in FAQs below.
Explore the changing styles of beauty -- and the astonishing lengths to which people have gone to attain it. Your expert companion? Professor Andrew Lear, four-time winner of the Harvard Certificate for Excellence in Teaching.
Lear's 'Dressed to Kill' opens your eyes to some of the most fascinating, bizarre and painful things people have done throughout history to look impressive, alluring and downright amazing.
From the grand hairdos of Imperial Rome to the outrageous wigs of the court at Versailles; from gold ear spools in pre-Columbian America to neck rings in Africa and Southeast Asia; and from 300 years of torturous corsets to 3000 years of artful cosmetics, the history of fashion is on dazzling display at the Met.
Professor Lear looks at both men's and women's fashion from head to toe, as well as inside out. (Just what did Victorian women wear underneath those giant hoops?) He looks at men, too—with their powdered wigs, white makeup, foppish ruffs and of course, those eyebrow-raising codpieces.
He goes beneath the surface to get to the real story: the political, social, and even medical currents that shaped fashion and how it changed:
Why did French courtiers wear foot-high wigs in the 17th century?
Were beauty spots really used to cover up syphilis?
What clothing was dyed with cyanide and poisoned its wearers over time?
How did bicycles affect the way women dressed in the closing years of the 19th century?
Speaker Bio
Prof. Andrew Lear is a renowned expert on same-sex relations in Greek and Roman antiquity. During his academic career, he taught at Harvard, Pomona College, and NYU. In recent years, he has founded Oscar Wilde Tours, the LGBTQ history and culture tour company and Shady Ladies Tours, a women's history and culture tour company. He is also working with actor/author Stephen Fry on a podcast about the "Scandals and Secrets of London's National Portrait Gallery."
When will the Zoom invite come?
The Zoom invite will be in the CONFIRMATION EMAIL from your order—IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE IT IN YOUR CONFIRMATION EMAIL PLEASE MESSAGE US IMMEDIATELY. Subsequent to this, the Zoom invite will be sent to your email address at 48hrs, 2hrs, and 10mins before the event. PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM AND SOCIAL FOLDERS IF YOU DO NOT SEE THE ZOOM INVITE IN YOUR INBOX.
How do tickets for the recording work?
The event will be recorded and you can buy a ticket for the recording above. If you buy a ticket for the recording you will be emailed automatically a couple of hours after the live event with a link to the recording and a password to access it. It will be available to view for 1 week after the live event. If you do not receive the link to the recording a couple of hours after the live event please email us—sometimes Eventbrite emails can get lost in spam/social folders. If you bought a ticket for the live event but couldn't make it please email us and we will send you the link to the recording.
What time zone is the event scheduled in?
The event is scheduled for 2pm EST (i.e. New York time). You can watch it in any time zone but please adjust to the time zone you are in.