“This was the year of the c word,” proclaimed Richard Martin, the late curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the December 1995 issue of Artforum. The c word in question? Couture, of course.

As fashion is fêted at tonight’s Met Gala—the year’s hautest event—and the Costume Institute unveils the exhibition “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion,” Artforum rouses Martin’s essay from the magazine’s archives.   —The editors