Harold Koda will be saluted with the Lifetime Achievement award at the Pratt Institute Fashion Show + Cocktail Benefit on May 5.
Koda, who has announced he will be exiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute as curator in charge in January, will be honored for his “outstanding fashion curatorship and scholarship, which have helped elevate fashion as an art form.” Koda’s latest work can be seen in the Costume Institute’s “Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style.” His previous exhibitions include “Charles James: Beyond Fashion,” “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations,” “Diana Vreeland: Immoderate Style” and “Madame Grès.”
Koda, who graduated from the University of Hawaii with a B.A. and a B.F.A. in art history also studied at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and earned his M.A. in landscape architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
Koda, whose early days at the Met were under Diana Vreeland and Richard Martin, has said he prefers the behind-the-scenes elements of curating or, as he put it, “sort of the unglamorous part.” This summer he told WWD the 2008 deal with the Brooklyn Museum to share its American and European collection was an absolute boon.
Koda will be honored at Pratt’s 6 p.m. May 5 fashion show at Spring Studios. He said, “As a curator, my focus has often been on what has passed, but the students from Pratt, all emerging talents, are part of an exciting and evolving fashion history in the making, a creative future that I look forward to seeing unfold.”