NYC's Met extends Chinese fashion exhibition

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's China: Through the Looking Glass exhibition has drawn more than 350,000 visitors since opening, and will be extended three weeks through Labor Day, Sept 7, museum officials announced on Tuesday.

The show features more than 100 dresses, gowns and accessories, showing how Western designers have been influenced by all things Chinese, such as the costumes of Imperial China and Shanghai in the 1920s. It opened on May 7, and is spread over 30,000 square feet and three times the size of any previous fashion show at the museum.

The most popular show put on by the Costume Institute has been the 2011 Alexander McQueen exhibition, which drew 661,000 visitors over three months and was extended by a week.

"This exhibition is one of the most ambitious ever mounted by the Met," Thomas P. Campbell, the Met's director and chief executive, said in a statement. "And I want as many people as possible to be able see it."

Visitors from China make up the Met's largest segment from abroad, and the museum saidso many Chinese are attending the show Chinese tour operators have doubled the number of tickets they originally planned to buy.

On the show's opening night, dozens of celebrities and the designers who dress them walked the red carpet into the Met to fete the exhibit.

Among the dresses that received the most attention that evening was the one worn by American singer Rihanna, a lavish creation by Chinese designer Guo Pei. It was a yellow cape, trimmed with fur and embroidered flowers, with a huge train and it took two years and 50,000 hours to make. And it weighed 55 pounds.

Many posted joke pictures on Twitter, suggesting the gown looked like an egg. "A friend of mine sent me one of the pictures, and said she thought the dress looked like an omelette," said Guo. "She said she hoped I didn't mind the comment and I said, yes I agree, it does look like an omelette."

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