Before the Met Gala Monday night, Anna Wintour apologized for “confusion” over the theme. The Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that the Gala opens and raises money for is Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, but the dress code was “The Garden of Time.” Anna said on the Today show the morning of the Gala that Costume Institute Chief Curator Andrew Bolton suggested the dress code, also the title of a short story by British author J.G. Ballard, known for his dystopian fiction. (“The Garden of Time” also inspired a 2021 collection by Bolton’s longtime partner, designer Thom Browne.) She knew, I guess, that guests and spectators alike were having a hard time understanding if the stars should be going for pajamas or florals.
Amidst the pre-Gala pearl-clutching about stories like Lauren Sánchez attending for the first time in a dress selected with Anna’s help and TikTok’s sponsorship of the event in light of a potential U.S. ban, the official dress code largely escaped scrutiny until around when the red carpet started. “The Garden of Time” had been widely understood by social media commenters to have something to do with time and gardens, and it does, but there’s more to it: Ballard’s story concerns a couple, Count Axel and his wife the Countess, spending their final days in a palatial mansion surrounded by a garden. Advancing toward the house from the distance, Ballard writes, is an army — “a vast confused throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers in ragged uniforms, pressing forward in a disorganised tide.” Count Axel picks “time flowers” from their garden, which can slow time but not stop it.
Rosalind Jana wrote for the BBC, “…[W]hat on Earth are we to make of this theme based on a story that, regardless of where its loyalties lie, features the destruction of high culture by an undifferentiated mass of humanity?” It’s an odd narrative to highlight right now. Maybe organizers chose it fully aware of the potential controversy, knowing that that would only boost monetizable online “impressions.” Blocks away, protesters carrying signs that read “No Met Gala While Bombs Drop in Gaza” and “No Celebration Without Liberation” were kept back from the museum by police. Condé Nast had already managed to stave off a demonstration at the Gala from its own editorial employees. Union members had threatened to picket unless a contract was struck, and the publisher reached a tentative deal with them less than 24 hours before arrivals were set to begin.
The Gala itself has a new theme, a new carpet design, and varied guests each year, but it has become rather predictable. Vogue will charge obscene amounts for tables ($350,000, this year) and individual seats ($75,000). Vogue.com livestream host La La Anthony will ask celebrities what they’re looking forward to on “fashion’s biggest night,” as though they’re there to do anything but promote brands they’re being paid to wear or their various entertainment projects. The fashion nerds, like Tom Ford, who said he was excited to see “some of the pieces from the nineteenth century that we haven’t seen in a long time” in the exhibition itself always seem to be in notably short supply. If I had a dollar for every time a guests said some version of “seeing friends” in response to what they’re excited about, I might be able to afford to buy my way in. Also, these celebrities will arrive wearing a mix of evening dresses and clothes that look like costumes, many of which make it impossible for wearers to sit, ascend stairs, or walk. They are often less apparel than social media like-bait.
Vogue knows this, and has turned it into its primary business. As I reported in ANNA: The Biography, Anna used to run this event as a pure charity fundraiser and forbade her ad sales team from selling sponsorships. But the magazine business is not what it was when she started planning the Gala in 1995. At Vogue parent company Condé Nast’s recent Newfronts presentation — where publishers present digital video offerings to ad buyers — executives pitched the Met Gala and other live events so hard that WWD’s report made it sound like the cockroach that went viral during last year’s Gala got more air time than Vogue magazine itself.
Sitting at the opening remarks of the exhibition preview Monday morning, it was hard not to notice that two of the tech giants putting Vogue in this spot — hyping a roach over the print magazine that spawned all of this — had snuggled right up to Anna while vanquishing much of her life’s work in the process. Met Director and Chief Executive Max Hollein thanked TikTok, a top sponsor of the Gala. OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati got time to speak about the chatbot her company had created for the exhibition, which allows museum visitors to “talk” to socialite Natalie Potter, who wore the 1930s wedding dress featured in the show. The look is so dramatic it’s positioned at the top of a staircase so the train can drip down five or six steps, not unlike those of guests to the Met Gala.
The chatbot invites us to ask “Natalie” about what her life was like. I played around with it, and it is an amusing little piece of tech. But it also says something that the slice of life organizers chose to thusly exploit from this exhibit is a socialite with an extra-fabulous wedding dress.
OpenAI is being sued by the New York Times and other publications for copyright infringement. I would have thought Vogue and Condé Nast would be better off joining such a suit than partnering with them. But such cognitive dissonance at this event has become as predictable as a bevy of Kardashians headlining the proceedings. If the global sociopolitical climate, which has been decaying since 2016, doesn’t put a damper on your big splashy celebrity party, why would anything else? People like to proclaim the Gala “dead” each year. It’s not dead — it’s as popular as ever — but it is no longer viewed the way it once was, as a self-contained thing that’s fun to pay attention to for a day or so. Rather, it’s a thing that exists in privileged opposition to the rest of the world, and for that reason it’s gradually losing its magic.
Three designers headlined the red carpet: Loewe, an exhibition sponsor; Alexander McQueen, which featured prominently in nature-inspired Sleeping Beauties; and John Galliano. Galliano dressed the night’s most anticipated guest, Zendaya. She walked up the stairs twice, first in custom Margiela couture and next in a vintage Givenchy dress from one of the two collections he made for that brand. He also dressed Kim Kardashian, Bad Bunny, Gwendoline Christie, and Natasha Poonawalla for the carpet, and Ariana Grande for her performance inside the party. The Cut had reported that Galliano was going to be the subject of the Costume Institute’s exhibition instead of Sleeping Beauties, but that museum officials scuttled it, fearing it would be too controversial. (Galliano lost his job from Dior in 2011 after a series of antisemitic tirades.)
The carpet felt like he had his moment anyway. Anna could have been using it as a testing ground to gauge the public mood around Galliano. I did not love any of his dresses (I liked Kardashian’s best, but was distracted by how painful her corset looked), but he’s been rehabilitated to a point where what he does is largely blindly celebrated. Owing a great deal to Anna’s help, he has made that coveted transition from canceled to social media like bait. (Galliano did not walk the carpet, but posed with guests inside.)
In an essay for Vogue in 1970, Ballard predicted social media, writing:
Every one of our actions during the day, across the entire spectrum of domestic life, will be instantly recorded on video-tape. In the evening we will sit back to scan the rushes, selected by a computer trained to pick out only our best profiles, our wittiest dialogue, our most affecting expressions filmed through the kindest filters, and then stitch these together into a heightened re-enactment of the day.
This selective sharing allows Vogue and the Gala to conveniently ignore many forces shaping our world today — protests of war, income inequality, and the myriad ways AI could exacerbate societal unrest, to name just a few. Since the media is driven by advertiser-supported algorithms, there will always be a silo that ignores realities inconvenient to business, like protests and labor unions. But, as in Ballard’s story, the mob is advancing. And as with the dresses in the exhibit, the Gala feels like itself a decaying relic, preserved only through careful maneuvering that likely has an expiration date.
Met Gala Loose Threads
I talked to fellow Substacker Elizabeth Holmes about how the Met Gala ushered in the era of theme dressing. Elizabeth is such a smart journalist with whom I feel like I’ve been in the fashion media trenches forever. Chatting with her is always great fun.
Vogue.com ran a live blog that I feel got buried during the Gala, but was very comprehensive and helped me catch some moments I missed. Choice updates include, “The Hair Was Hairing.”
You may have seen the AI-generated image of Katy Perry at the Met Gala in a floral dress floating around the internet. Despite pretty obviously depicting a past arrivals carpet, apparently it fooled a lot of people, including Perry’s mom, who shared it.
Vogue.com reports on the food inside the Gala: The main course was “a filet of beef topped with a tortellini rose. [Caterer Olivier] Cheng hopes it resembles a culinary castle: ‘We’re floating the beef on a pine needle and mushroom “moat,”’ he says. The floral accent is a nod to the exhibit itself, which features over 270 nature-inspired pieces. One of them? An upside-down rose hat by Philip Treacy.” Ok then!
Vogue.com also has the tea on the Gala’s decor, which was meant to feel like an enchanted forest. The tree centerpiece in the museum’s entrance took six months to make.
The New York Times followed Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez around the Gala for a little bit. Apparently, Bezos introduced himself to Kris Jenner, who hangs out with Sánchez in Instagram photos every so often, as “Jeff.” Sánchez was overheard loudly saying, “I’m having the best night ever!” And, “I am having so much fun!”
FKA Twigs hosted an after party and a lot of guests changed before showing up. If you haven’t yet gotten your fashion fix and need to mainline more outfits, here you go.
Here’s some footage of Ariana Grande performing “Yes, And?” at the Met Gala.
Finally, some tweets:
What were your favorite and least favorite Met Gala looks and moments? Please sound off in the comments!
It all seemed so joyless.
I wonder if part of the reason is that that the event has outgrown itself in a specific kind of way. When you compare it to the Oscars, for instance, there is a point to it all (the actual awards) that the public is part of, because they can view the entire event. The Met Gala just feels so disconnected now because you know the vast majority of attendees don't care about museums (some of them probably don't even know the difference between the Met and MoMA, I'm guessing) or even fully understand why they are there. So it all just feels kind of fake, and the public isn't allowed inside for the party, so it winds up feeling very hollow, despite the absurd star power on the red carpet.
When it was more of a society event, there was a perception of authenticity, because those attending seemed to have a true interest in the institution of the Met. It felt like more of a NYC-specific type of thing that was more closely connected to the museum. I am not sure if any of this made sense, it's kind of word salad, but tldr: the gala is too big, too corporate, and too phony-feeling now to be relevant.