A British textile artist has accused the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of exhibiting a purportedly counterfeit version of her collaborative work, raising questions over authorship and credit in the museum’s current Costume Art exhibition.

Anouska Samms, a London-based artist known for weaving with human hair, contends that a garment on display, attributed solely to Israeli designer Yoav Hadari, is a re-creation of a dress they co-created in 2023 for Hadari’s fashion label, Psycheangelic. The dress, titled Corpus Nervina 0.0, was shown at the museum’s exhibition coinciding with the recent Met Gala.

According to correspondence reviewed, Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, initially expressed enthusiasm for including Samms as a co-author of the piece in the exhibition label and catalogue. Bolton’s communication indicated that both Hadari’s atelier, YH Studios, and Samms were to be credited. However, by December, Bolton informed Samms that Hadari had withdrawn the original “hair dress” from acquisition, citing reasons unrelated to the museum.

Samms’s legal representative, intellectual property lawyer Jon Sharples, states that Hadari informed the museum that the original garment, constructed with human hair, had sustained water damage. Despite this, Samms was surprised to find that a near-identical dress, made with silk instead of hair, was acquired and displayed under Hadari’s name alone. Samms only became aware of the exhibition after an organization tagged her in a social media post recognizing her distinct design.

Samms and Hadari collaborated in early 2023 during a residency program hosted by the Sarabande Foundation, supported by Alexander McQueen’s legacy. Hadari recruited Samms to develop elements for his autumn-winter 2023 collection. In a prior interview, Hadari described the “hair dress” as a significant joint creation, emphasizing the collaborative nature of their work.

A contract from February 2023, signed by Hadari, identifies Samms as the sole intellectual property owner of the fabric and licenses the textile design’s use for one year with conditions for renewal. This license would have expired in February 2024, before the exhibition opening.

YH Studios, Hadari’s New York-based studio, maintains that the Met’s exhibited garment is a 2025 iteration crafted solely by Hadari using different materials. They argue that Samms’s intellectual property applies only to the original hair textile, which was not used in the Met installation. The museum’s label for the dress acknowledges that Samms’s textile was excluded and specifies the construction materials as white silk organza, polyester, cotton tweed yarns, and silk thread.

Samms has called for recognition of the artistic integrity of their original creation and seeks proper credit as co-author for any display of the design. She has expressed a desire to avoid personal attacks on Hadari, describing him as an emerging artist. Sharples criticized the Metropolitan Museum for what he views as a failure to address the issue, warning of potential copyright and moral rights violations, while noting that legal experts in the U.S. have offered to assist Samms.

The Metropolitan Museum declined to comment on the dispute, citing respect for the artists’ ongoing disagreement. YH Studios has not publicly accused Samms of wrongdoing. Samms conveyed on social media the difficulties artists face navigating intellectual property rights within the fashion and art industries.