“Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy.”

Our favorite fictional characters will walk the fashion runway from May 7, 2008 to September 1, 2008 in the highly celebrated event, “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy.”

Everybody got to have their favorite superhero. And most of the time our well-loved superheroes becomes our inspiration for clothing and style. So as superheroes are always top in the list of most popular mass icons, the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized a show that aims to explore the symbolic and metaphorical associations between the superheroes and the fashion.

There will be 60 ensembles to be featured in the exhibition including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear. These ensembles are expected to reveal how the fictional characters serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion as well as their ability to “empower and transform the human body.”

Top designers of the show will be led by Giorgio Armani who will be the Honorary Chair of the Gala. His Co-Chairs are famous Hollywood celebrities George Clooney, actress Julia Roberts, and Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour. Other famous designers w ho will be present during the said event will include Alexander McQueen, Atair, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Jean Paul Gaultier, Eiko Ishioka, Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Nike, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Speedo, Spyder, Bernhard Willhelm, Dolce & Gabbana, Julien Macdonald, Three As Four, Walter van Beirendonck, and Versace.

Every superhero will represent different themes that each reflect a unique expression in fashion:

“Superman and Spider-Man costumes will address the subject of “The Graphic Body.”

“Superman’s ‘S’ chevron to designer logos and branding.

“Catwoman will represent “The Paradoxical Body,” which will explore the character’s vacillating manifestations of good and bad.

“The stars and stripes of Wonder Woman’s uniform, a composite of the American flag, epitomize “The Patriotic Body” and designs that appropriate patriotic emotions implicit in the character.

“The Hulk, a metaphor for male potency, will introduce a section on “The Virile Body,” which includes inflatable clothing that swells to exaggerate the male physique.

“The Flash – a character who possesses superhuman speed -- will address the “Aerodynamic Body” as manifest in high-tech sportswear such as Nike’s “Swift Suit” and Speedo’s “Fastskin Suit,” which enhance athletic performance in sprinters and swimmers respectively.

“Batman and Iron Man will represent “The Armored Body,” and examine avant-garde fashion that merges mesh and metal, skin and chromium.

“The Mutant Body, denoted by the X-Men, will highlight clothing that morphs men into beasts.

“Ghost Rider (the biker-demon with flaming skull) and The Punisher (the vigilante who sports a giant death-skull emblem on his T-shirt) will symbolize “The Postmodern Body” that suggests an anti-hero identity through the eclectic mixing of street styles.”

To make superheroes walk in the catwalk as fashion icons is one of the most eccentric but appealing modeling concept ever conceptualized. But to see our favorite heroes transform into runway models, isn't that wonderful?