Earlier today I chanced upon a short post by Cathy Horyn on OTR about a competition for twenty Parsons seniors to restructure looks from the Louis Vuitton archive into new avant-garde creations.

Filled with jealousy and intrigue I investigated further. I soon found out that the competition took place on September 17, with the mind-blowing prize of $2500 and an invite to the Louis Vuitton FW10 show in February 2010.

And it gets crazier: the young designers had only nine hours to complete their garments while working in the gallery windows of the Parsons building on 5th Ave, their creative processes exposed to the streets of Manhattan.

We would have easily lost our cool and panicked Andre style (Project Runway season 2 for all you PR buffs out there), but designers Min Sun Kim and Lydia Kim came out victorious by restructuring a Vuitton trenchcoat and men’s wear pieces into a gorgeous dress with a hand painted hem.

At the Met, no less. How chic is that?

The Costume Institute is launching a film series during July in conjunction with their Model as Muse exhibit and they’ve lined up some pretty awesome special guests to attend and discuss the movies, along with curator Harold Koda and guest curator Kohle Yohannan.

Here’s the lineup:

July 10 - Funny Face and Carmen Dell’Orifice
July 17 - Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? and Dorothy McGowan
July 22 - Unzipped and Isaac Mizrahi

Tickets are only $10 and you can get them here.

It’ll be like a way more stylish version of all those film classes we loved so in college. Plus, we’re just about due for our annual viewing of Unzipped and we can’t wait to watch it with Isaac himself.

The big day is finally here and since we have a previous evening commitment, Gossip Girl, we spent the morning with Marc and Anna and Hamish and Harold and even a model or two at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibit itself is spectacular. It opens with life size elephant cut outs and a mannequin wearing Dovima’s Avedon Dior. A hallway of Irving Penns pays tributes to the originals - Suzy Parker, Lisa Fonssagrives, Dorian Leigh and co. There are New Look coats and dresses, Charles James and a Madame Gres. You turn the corner to David Baileys, iconic images of Twiggy and Veruschka wielding her shotgun. Music blares, “Talking ‘bout my generation,” and the mannequins wear Cardins, Paco Rabbanne link dresses and a YSL Mondrian. Then it’s onto Lauren Hutton, Rene Russo, Jerry Hall and unreal Helmut Newton photographs before turning the corner to Versace clad models carrying, seriously, broken champagne bottles. Lastly, the supermodels and the 90s in a graffitied room stocked with Marc Jacobs’ Perry Ellis, Ellen Von Unwerth photography and mind-boggling pictures of Kate.

It’s this room, according to the Costume Institute’s Director Harold Koda, that Anna didn’t feel was “quite grunge enough” late Friday night. And so Oscar winning set director, John Meyer, stayed up Friday and into Saturday, tagging the walls with “Daria,” “Twiggy,” “Kate,” etc in army green, silver and black spray paint - it’s the best part of the whole thing.

Marc said he’s, “honored, flattered, thrilled, grateful to have anything to do with this institution,” and called his involvement, twenty years after his first Met, “a dream come true.” And Koda said he was a pleasure to work with - his only demand that “the exhibit be lively.”

We could gush some more, but basically, the exhibition lives up to the standard set by 06’s Anglomania. So go.

The Costume Institute at the Met is finally getting its own audio guide.

We never understood why one of the most popular, (at least in recent years), galleries lacked an informational tour to go with it. The clothes are fun to see, but left without any context other than the obligatory opening paragraph, one’s forced to imagine the stories behind them and the historical context in which they fit.

So, thanks to Harold Koda, the curator responsible for most of the institute’s recent success, visitors will get ten times more out of their Costume Institute experience.

And of course, when we’re talking about clothes that range from pre-Poiret to Paquin to Prada one can’t have just any narrator. Sarah Jessica Parker’s already recorded Costume: The Art of Dress which will cover most of the museum’s clothing and other pertinent works of art.

It’ll be fun to hear Carrie’s voice, we just hope an historian wrote the script.

At the blog mode panel at the Met two weeks ago, Harold Koda said Simon Costin’s Victorian looking necklaces were two of the most discussed pieces of the exhibit.

Most people who took the time to post comments were disturbed by the sperm filled vials and dried bird claws, but a few found them really beautiful - and so did we. The gothic-themed jewelry included intricate wire work, polished stones and engraved pendants, a perfect accompaniment to our white t-shirt dominated wardrobe.

Unfortunately, no mere mortal, (except maybe Daphne Guinness?), could get her little hands on the pieces so we might layer a couple of these from Etsy seller Aminyitray instead.

We love the seahorse to the left. There’s also a microscope slide, specimen jars, and even a bobcat tooth necklace.

Sorry, we couldn’t find any with sperm - but we’re pretty sure you’ll be ok with that.