The Fine Art of Staging a Blockbuster

With a string of successes, Matthew Yokobosky is giving the Brooklyn Museum’s fashion exhibitions an edge over similar fare at the Met.

Growing up in the town of Republic in southwestern Pennsylvania, Matthew Yokobosky would visit the local tailor most days after school. “His name was Danny Mariotti, and I used to go and watch him sew,” he said.

There were the Trevallini sisters, whom he liked to observe constructing jeweled flower arrangements and wedding bouquets. “Oh, and Charlie Angeloni, the shoemaker,” he added with the uncommon recall that over the years has served him well.

“His memory is like a super power,” said Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, one in a skein of factors that prompted her in 2018 to name Mr. Yokobosky the museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture.