UPDATED: Artist Anouska Samms Accuses Andrew Bolton and The Met of Plagiarism

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibition Costume Art is an exploration of the connections between garments from The Costume Institute and objects from the Museum’s other collections. It’s the Costume Institute’s biggest show of the year and although we have not been by The Met to view it yet, we hear it is quite good.

While many of the designers on display in this year’s exhibition — Dior, Thom Browne, Jean Paul Gaultier — are doubtless familiar to even the most casual of fashion observers, the show is also an opportunity for lesser, independent designers and artists to have their work showcased and even acquired by The Met for their permanent collection, providing valuable exposure for their names and creations. Artists like Anouska Samms, a textile and sculpture artist based in London, UK.

Except… not Samms. Because according to her, her name was cut from the exhibition and catalog, despite her dress appearing in the Costume Art show and despite multiple emails with curator Andrew Bolton concerning it’s inclusion.

Well, it’s not her dress exactly. Rather, it is a replica (or, as Samms puts it, “something like a counterfeit”) that looks a whole lot like the piece Samms collaborated on. To the point where pictures of the two of them next to each other feel like one of those “online shopping: expectation vs reality” memes.

According to Samms — who has posted extensively about this over the last few days on her Instagram account — it all started back in 2023 when she was awarded a student residency at Alexander McQueen’s Sarabande Foundation. There, she says she met emerging fashion designer Yoav Hadari of New York-based fashion brand YH Studios. Hadari studied at Central Saint Martins in London and worked under Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli and Bolton’s partner Thom Browne.

“[Hadari] asked me to hand weave textiles for several pieces of their 2023 autumn winter collection and this dress is what was born out of that collaboration,” says Samms in a video posted a few days ago. “It was presented at the Sarabande foundation and in 2025 The Met asked to collect it for their permanent collection as well as [to] include it in their annual fashion exhibition which opens the Met Gala.”

She continues: “At the end of 2025 I was told by my collaborator that they no longer wished to exhibit the work, that they were only putting in another piece that they designed on their own without me and this was even confirmed by Andrew Bolton OBE that the acquisition had fallen through and that he hoped to work with me in the future. So you can understand my shock as I was sitting in my favorite cafe last Sunday to realize, after being tagged in an Instagram post [by the Sarabande Foundation], that my design was in fact in The Met. My collaborator was there, standing next to it at the opening of the gala and I actually couldn’t believe what was happening.”

According to Samms, she owns the intellectual property rights to the fabric she designed and says there is a contractual agreement between herself and Hadari to this effect. Also, according to her email exchanges with Bolton — screenshots of which she included in her videos — he was aware of her partial ownership of said designs and in direct communication with her about them.

According to Samms, The Met has declined to make changes to the exhibition or compensate her for her work and denied any wrongdoing in the situation. “The Met are refusing to own their role in this or hold themselves accountable,” Samms said in a subsequent post, “because to do the right thing means accepting that Andrew Bolton OBE and his team did the wrong thing.”

Samms says she is currently working with a lawyer in the UK, John Sharples, and reports that she is receiving offers from multiple US copyright lawyers who have heard about her case, seen the evidence she has presented online, and would like to work with her, believing she may have grounds for a case against The Met and Hadari under US copyright law.

Hadari, for his part, denies any wrongdoing in the situation. A representative for YH Studios stating over email that, “Yoav Hadari developed, designed, and constructed the Nervina Corpus 0.0, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection, using his own design direction, techniques, and materials, and referencing a dress he created in 2023.”

Hadari’s representative concedes that Samms was, indeed, involved in the development and design of the original garment, writing that “Hadari collaborated with Ms. Samms on an earlier iteration of the Nervina Corpus concept, which included a woven hair textile created by Ms. Samms under Mr. Hadari’s creative direction, with Mr. Hadari approving materials, yarn selection, hair color, and sourcing at each stage of production.”

However, they insist that Samms has no ownership over the piece that was ultimately acquired by The Met, writing: “That textile or any of its components (including hair) is not included in the Nervina Corpus 0.0 in any form. Per the agreement between the parties, Ms. Samms holds IP rights to that specific textile, not techniques, methods, or structural concepts, a distinction she herself acknowledged by requesting that her textile be priced separately to the museum.

“The final Nervina Corpus 0.0 is the result of Mr. Hadari’s own draping, hand stitching, and using embroidery rather than weaving on a dress cut on the bias in layers, which he sewed and designed independently. Ms. Samms was offered multiple paths to resolution, including credit and financial compensation, by both Mr. Hadari and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These offers were declined repeatedly.”

YH Studios does currently include a reference to Samms and the original 2023 dress in the caption of an Instagram post about the look in The Met’s exhibition, but it is unclear if the mention was there originally, as the post has been edited since it was first published.

The Daily did reach out to The Met for a statement as well.

UPDATE: A source with greater direct knowledge of the legal situation in which the parties find themselves told us that Samms has no legal standing — at least, not in the United States — as she was only responsible for the creating of the textile used in the 2023 dress, not the actual design of said dress. Since the textile was not used, there is no issue. Even if the textile that was used ultimately looks a lot like Samms’ original creation.

A representative for Hadari also had this to add: “Mr. Hadari conceived the Nervina Corpus concept in 2023, and it was fully developed by the time Ms. Samms began collaborating with Mr. Hadari. She was tasked with developing a textile interpretation of an idea he had already mocked up, using boards and swatches to communicate a vision that already included thread-on-white-dress construction similar to both the final 2023 piece and the work now acquired by the Met.

“This process of handing off ideas to craftsmen and artists for supply or collaboration is standard practice in fashion. Ms. Samms was engaged for her weaving expertise in response to a creative prompt by Mr. Hadari. The Nervina Corpus concept that started in 2023 evolved into a new design that does not use Ms. Samms’ protected textile. We deeply value what Ms. Samms contributed. However, 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.

“The Nervina Corpus 0.0 has always been Mr. Hadari’s design. We remain hopeful that a mutual resolution can be reached, one that honors the contributions of everyone involved and allows all parties to move forward.”