The Met releases video preview of the Rei Kawakubo exhibition

The Met's spring exhibition devoted to Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo opens to the public on May 4. Ahead of the opening, fashion and art lovers can catch a sneak peek of the show in a video featuring curator Andrew Bolton.

"Rei Kawakubo/Comme de Garçons: Art of the In-Between" is the subject of the Costume Institute's spring exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It will feature nearly 150 examples of Kawakubo's womenswear created for the label Comme des Garçons from the early 1980s to her most recent collection.

Attesting to the richness of Kawakubo's body of work, the show will be the Met's first monographic exhibition devoted to a living designer in more than three decades.

In a video shared by the Met in early April, Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, discusses the exhibition, while footage shows some of the many creations set to go on display.

"Rei is all about creativity," says Bolton. "She's about innovation; she forces you to rethink notions of beauty, notions of the body, notions of fashion, notions of wearability -- breaking down these barriers by creating hybrid identities."

The video also reveals behind-the-scenes clips from the photo shoot for the exhibition catalog, which features live models wearing Kawakubo's designs.

"There's a myth about how Rei's clothes are unwearable, so seeing them on live models is a way of, in a way, dispelling that mythology," says Bolton.

"Rei Kawakubo/Comme de Garçons: Art of the In-Between" runs May 4 - September 4. On May 1, the annual star-studded Met Gala will celebrate the opening of the exhibition.