{"id":486924,"date":"2026-05-16T00:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486924\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T00:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:58:11","slug":"met-museums-hair-dress-is-a-copy-of-mine-says-british-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486924\/","title":{"rendered":"Met museum\u2019s hair dress is a copy of mine, says British artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British textile artist has accused the Metropolitan Museum of Art of displaying a \u201ccounterfeit\u201d of her work for its major costume exhibition, without providing her with credit or compensation.<\/p>\n

The London-based artist Anouska Samms, known for her technique of weaving with human hair, claims that a garment attributed solely to the Israeli designer Yoav Hadari is a remake of a collaborative piece they created together in 2023 for his fashion label, Psycheangelic, titled\u00a0Nervina.<\/p>\n

The dispute centers on a dress titled\u00a0Corpus Nervina 0.0, on view in the museum\u2019s Costume Art exhibition, which opened on the night of the Met Gala<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"CollageThe original Nervina dress, left, and the contested Corpus Nervina 0.0 dress included in the Met exhibition<\/p>\n

In emails seen by\u00a0The Times, Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met\u2019s Costume Institute, told Samms in November 2025 that the museum was \u201cthrilled\u201d that her \u201cwonderful hair dress\u201d would be featured and that she would be listed as a co-author.<\/p>\n

Bolton explicitly noted that credit should include both Hadari\u2019s atelier, YH Studios, and Anouska Samms on the object label, in the catalogue record and in any further mention of the work in copy.<\/p>\n

Yet by December 2025, Bolton confirmed that Hadari had cancelled the acquisition of the \u201chair dress\u201d, stating the reasons were \u201cunrelated to the museum\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Jon Sharples, the intellectual property lawyer representing Samms, Hadari told the Met that the original collaborative piece, made of human hair, had suffered \u201cwater damage\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Samms was \u201cshocked\u201d to discover that what she felt was a near-identical looking version of the dress, reconstructed with silk rather than hair, had been acquired and displayed under Hadari\u2019s name alone.<\/p>\n

She became aware of the display only after being tagged in a social media post by an organisation that recognised her distinctive design.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy design was in fact in the Met, my collaborator was there standing next to it at the opening of the gala and I couldn\u2019t believe it was happening,\u201d Samms said in a series of Instagram videos.<\/p>\n

Samms and Hadari first met in early 2023 during a studio residency at the Sarabande Foundation, a programme\u00a0established by Alexander McQueen to support emerging artists. Hadari asked Samms to create some pieces for his autumn-winter 2023 collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a 2023 interview with\u00a0Flanelle Magazine, Hadari initially described the work as a joint effort, stating: \u201cI just went into her studio and saw a woven sample on the wall \u2026 Part of what makes [Samms\u2019s] work so unique is that she weaves with hair \u2026 then we did this art piece together. The \u2018hair dress\u2019 was super important for me in that collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the interview, Hadari also said he learnt to \u201clet go\u201d of control as he was working with Samms because of \u201cwho she is\u201d, and leant into the process of \u201ccollaboration\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"ArtistSamms working on a textile pieceKATHRYN MACCORGARRY GRAY<\/p>\n

A legal contract seen by\u00a0The Times, dated February 2023 and signed by Hadari, explicitly states that Samms is the \u201csole owner of the intellectual property of the fabric\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The document confirms that legal protections were in place months before the collection\u2019s debut, and stipulates that the \u201cterm of use for licence of the fabric is one year\u201d, after which both parties would need to agree to an extension. Under these terms, the licence for the textile design appears to have expired in February 2024, months before the Met exhibition opened.<\/p>\n

In a statement to\u00a0The Times, Hadari\u2019s New York-based atelier contended that Hadari \u201cdeveloped, designed, and constructed\u201d the version at the Met using his own design direction and materials.<\/p>\n

The studio argued that Samms\u2019s intellectual property rights applied only to the specific hair textile used in the earlier iteration, not to the \u201ctechniques, methods, or structural concepts\u201d of the dress now on display. The dress on display at the Met is identified as a 2025 edition of the original 2023 design, although only Hadari is credited as its creator. The Met\u2019s wall text accompanying the garment notes that Samms\u2019s textile was not used. Instead, the design is made of \u201cwhite silk organza hand-embroidered with black and white polyester and cotton tweed yarns, and white silk thread\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Samms told\u00a0The Times\u00a0that her desire was primarily to secure the \u201cartistic integrity\u201d of the original work by swapping out the remake for one she is happy to put her name to,\u00a0and then \u201csecuring proper credit as co-author of that design\u201d. She is insistent that the buck stops with the Met.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud of what we made together and I really mean it when I say I don\u2019t want people attacking my collaborator, who is another young artist at the start of their career,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Sharples told\u00a0The Times\u00a0that the museum\u2019s refusal to intervene, despite Bolton\u2019s previous correspondence, was a \u201cterrible abdication of responsibility\u201d. He added: \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be an exhibition that celebrates artists and artistry and the visiting public is being let down by the omission.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sharples noted that the Met risked committing its own act of copyright and moral rights infringement in the UK, while US lawyers have contacted Samms to offer to argue the case.<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has declined to comment on the specifics of the dispute, stating that it is doing so \u201cout of respect for the artists and their ongoing dispute\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Samms said in an Instagram post: \u201cAs an artist I often feel powerless \u2014 most artists are at the mercy of this opaque industry, how are we meant to know our rights?\u201d<\/p>\n

YH Studios has not levelled fault at the Met. Hadari added that he had designed and sewn the dress on display \u201cindependently\u201d and that the earlier iteration included a hair textile created by Samms under Hadari\u2019s \u201ccreative direction\u201d, and that the designer approved all materials and sourcing at each stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deeply value what Ms Samms contributed,\u201d Hadari said. \u201cHowever, in design, especially in fashion, the same concept can evolve across multiple iterations, and materials or fabrication methods often change significantly. That is simply the nature of the creative process.\u201d<\/p>\n

He further claimed that multiple paths to resolution, including offers of credit and financial compensation from both himself and the Met, were \u201cdeclined repeatedly\u201d by Samms.<\/p>\n

Samms countered that materials and methods had been used to \u201creproduce substantial parts\u201d of her original artistic choices, \u201cincluding the compositional elements around the placement of the clumps of hair, their proportions and how they are spaced\u201d.<\/p>\n

She added that she was not paid for the collaboration, which was a \u201cfusion\u201d of their practices, and that she too had made offers for resolution that were not accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A British textile artist has accused the Metropolitan Museum of Art of displaying a \u201ccounterfeit\u201d of her work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-486924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116581545800316207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}