Keeping Up With the Met Gala

Kim Kardashian was the star. Because she wore a dress she lost 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into.

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Anna Wintour attended the Met Gala on Monday night wearing Chanel couture, as expected, and a tiara, which was entirely the opposite. It almost felt like a big sartorial FU to everyone who over the last five-ish years thought she was on the decline or on her way out of Vogue — or to anyone who simply wished for that to be the case. She’s still there, reigning over her kingdom, which is on its most excessive, exclusive, and expensive display at the Met Gala each year. And this year, it made what should have been a glorious return to its famous First Monday in May time slot since the pandemic disrupted the event in 2020.

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Only, the return was less than glorious. And I’m not going to proclaim the gala “dead” or accuse Anna of losing her grip, as we in media like to do, because it could very well be somehow better next year. But the word that comes to mind for me regarding this year’s gala is regressive.

The dress code was “gilded glamour white tie,” which was bizarre in itself given the fashion industry’s overt attempts in recent years to somehow contribute to the social justice movement. The Gilded Age, as I previously wrote, was known for extreme income inequality and racism as much as glitz and pouf sleeves. Vogue.com even said in a post about the dress code: “The 2022 Met Gala will ask its attendees to embody the grandeur — and perhaps the dichotomy — of Gilded Age New York.” Some guests did use the theme to call attention to the dark side of the era, per a summary of such looks on CNN.com. Gabrielle Union spoke to Vogue about her Versace dress during its red carpet livestream:

"When you think about the Gilded Age and Black and brown people in this country, this country is built off of our backs, our blood, sweat and tears," Union told red carpet host LaLa Anthony. "So we added these red crystals to represent the blood spilled during the accumulation of gross wealth by a few during the Gilded Age, off of the backs of Black people and people of color in this country."

Riz Ahmed came in a simple look he called a “shout out to the immigrant workers who kept the Gilded Age golden.” And Questlove’s coat was made by Black women quilters in Alabama. “I wanted to highlight Black women who have sacrificed for the country,” he said. Yet these looks were not the main headline getters of the night.

Guests seemed to make greater effort this year to stay within the confines of the theme, if you think of the theme as high-society ballgowns. Vogue.com even had a poll on each look in its red carpet slideshow where we could click and tell them if we thought the look was on-theme. (I can just picture some advertiser demanding “interactivity” and then an ad sales rep insisting the editors start using hot new polling technology [!] to satisfy them.)

Most people’s main Gilded Age reference is the HBO show, and it wasn’t hard to spot references to those costumes in Vanessa Hudgens’s sleeves or Paloma Elsesser’s corset or Sarah Jessica Parker’s silhouette. The clothes were more restrained than they had been at the camp-themed gala in 2019, which, André Leon Talley told me in an interview for my book, “went off the rails.” Katy Perry has taken the brunt of the heat for the red carpet’s decline since then, both Talley and Tom Ford telling me that they wished it hadn’t become an event where guests dressed up like chandeliers and hamburgers (both of which were worn by Perry). But she showed up Monday night in a look that was definitely more dress than Beauty and the Beast “Be Our Guest” extra.

But the return to a more classic variety of glamour still was not the main headline. Nor was Blake Lively in her color-changing Statue of Liberty-inspired Versace dress (nothing against Blake, but this dress didn’t do anything for me; I welcome disagreement in the comments, maybe I’m dead inside). The main story was Kim Kardashian wearing the same dress Marilyn Monroe did to sing happy birthday to JFK. The main subplot to that story was all the Kardashian/Jenners getting invites for the first time ever, like this was just another episode of their Hulu show, the main action being that they walked up some stairs wearing looks by designers like Thom Browne. (I have never watched the show, but a friend once described it to me as various scenes of these women just sort of sitting in different spots; again, disagreement is welcome in comments.)

Rumors about Kim wearing this dress — as though it deserved rumors? — appeared in the press prior to the event. Kim was one of the last people to walk the carpet with her boyfriend and a fur shrug falling off her arms (which apparently was there to conceal the back zipper she couldn’t close over her butt). Kim told Vogue that she lost 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into this dress, which is exactly the sort of retrograde messaging this industry has been trying to distance itself from for years.

Missing in action were the A list of the A list that the event usually attracts — stars like Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Rihanna, after whom a statue was modeled for display in the museum. But the main stars of the carpet seem to have been the Kardashian/Jenners, Kim outshining her brethren with her gimmicky outfit.

Kim’s previous major headline tour came after she told Variety, “I have the best advice for women in business. Get your fucking ass up and work.” Her comments, of course, were met with immediate and immense backlash online. Speaking of work, the Condé Nast union, which has not yet been recognized by the company, issued a statement prior to the gala to remind everyone of just how this event gets put on each year: through many extra hours of work by Vogue staff. It read “sparkle comes from our sweat,” and continued, per Page Six:

“Behind the cameras, there are hundreds of Vogue workers who are underpaid, undervalued, and overworked… Without us, the Met Gala simply could not happen. But Condé takes our labor for granted, forcing us to accept low pay, long hours, and unpaid overtime all for the benefit of ‘prestige.’ Prestige doesn’t pay the bills. Prestige doesn’t pay the rent.”

Parallels between the Gilded Age and Condé Nast are hard to ignore. During the Gilded Age, while the wealthy built grotesque mansions in Newport, immigrant factory workers lived in abhorrent conditions in tenements. At Condé Nast, Anna Wintour retains her position and perks like a company-provided town car, while her lower level staff is unionizing in effort to obtain things like a more diverse workforce, better pay, and job security.

There is an inescapable tone deafness to the Met Gala in 2022. It persists with Vogue might, despite the overall decline of legacy publishing, in order to bring attention to certain luxury fashion labels and raise money for their works to be preserved in a museum collection. It is a night for some of the most privileged people on the planet to be extra-celebrated for how they look and dress. Because after all, the majority of them are already celebrated for how they look and dress.

Toward the end of the gala Monday night, Politico published a leaked Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade and upend life and healthcare for millions of women in this country. The story instantly made the gala seem as trivial as Kim Kardashian’s hair color. If the whole thing felt particularly regressive this year, maybe it was simply par for the course. We live in a hideously regressive world.

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