Jeremy attends Costume Institute Gala

Jeremy and his date Francesca Bortolotto Possati

Francesca Bortolotto Possati is the chief of the Bauer hotel group in Venice, Italy. The forty-something Francesca Bortolotto Possati, is the owner of Venice’s Bauer hotel, and it has been home to her family for generations. Francesca grew up in a splendid 17th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal and now lives in another one nearby with her teenage daughter. Her looks are so characteristic of the “Serene Republic,” as Venice was once known, that you can’t miss her resemblance to the women who inhabit the paintings of Bellini, Veronese and Titian, except that she wears Caraceni, Hermes and Armani. Tall, with flowing, fair hair and eyes the pale blue of the city’s skies, she is met most mornings by a redwood motorboat at the dock outside her palazzo. She rides up the Grand Canal to the Bauer, which her late grandfather, a Genoan shipping tycoon, bought in the 1940s after he moved to Venice to marry her Venetian grandmother.

Jeremy and his date Francesca Bortolotto Possati

Jeremy Irons in Armani

Jeremy and his date Francesca Bortolotto Possati

Jeremy Irons in the background on left

Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute Explores Role of Fashion Models as Muses of Recent Eras

* Gala Benefit May 4, 2009, with Honorary Chair Marc Jacobs and Co-Chairs Kate Moss, Justin Timberlake, and Anna Wintour

The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, the spring 2009 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, explores the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty, focusing on iconic fashion models in the latter half of the 20th century and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras. The exhibition is on view at the Metropolitan from May 6 through August 9, 2009.
The exhibition is made possible by Marc Jacobs. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.

“The exhibition examines a timeline of fashion from 1947 to 1997 through the idealized aesthetic of the fashion model,” said Harold Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. “We look at the power of clothing, fashion photography, and the model to project the look of an era. With a mere gesture, a truly stellar model can sum up the attitude of her time – becoming not only a muse to designers or photographers, but a muse to a generation.”

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum’s Costume Institute Gala Benefit takes place on Monday, May 4, 2009. Marc Jacobs serves as Honorary Chair of the Gala. Co-Chairs are Kate Moss; Justin Timberlake; and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. This fundraising event is The Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

The exhibition features approximately 80 masterworks of haute couture and ready-to-wear. Fashion editorial, advertising, and runway photography plus large- scale projections from feature films are used throughout the galleries to contextualize the fashion zeitgeist.