Met Costume Art Faces Authorship Dispute Over Yoav Hadari Dress
A dress in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Costume Art” exhibition has become the focus of a dispute over credit, collaboration, and intellectual property. Anouska Samms says the hair-based textile she helped create with designer Yoav Hadari was used in Corpus Nervina 0.0, a work the Met attributes to Hadari alone.
Samms says she met Hadari in 2023, when both were residents at the Sarabande Foundation in London. That year, they collaborated on Hair Dress, which Samms says resembles Corpus Nervina 0.0. She has also said that an October 2023 contract, reportedly drawn up by Sarabande head Trino Verkade, stated that she was the sole owner of the fabric’s intellectual property and that the license for its use would last one year.
The dispute sharpened after the Met expressed interest in acquiring Hair Dress and including it in “Costume Art.” Samms, who spent four years as a research fellow at London’s V &A Museum before turning to art full time, says she took steps to protect her role. She says she contacted Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s lead curator, directly to confirm that she would receive credit and had the museum prepare two separate purchase agreements for the dress.
According to Samms’s lawyer, Jon Sharples, that sequence appears to have prompted Hadari to withdraw Hair Dress from consideration and instead offer the Met two ensembles of his own design. A screenshot shared by Samms shows Bolton telling her that a redacted party had explained the reasoning, and that it was unrelated to the museum.
The Met declined to comment, citing respect for the artists. In a statement, Hadari said that Corpus Nervina 0.0 was developed, designed, and constructed under his own direction, using his own materials and techniques. He added that Samms’s rights apply only to the specific textile, not to the design, name, concept, construction, or creative direction of the dress.
Samms says the matter could be resolved through credit and £1,000 in payment. Beyond the immediate disagreement, the case points to a broader tension in fashion and contemporary art: museums increasingly display collaborative works, but the boundaries of authorship can remain stubbornly unclear.
