Written by Sarah Smith. Graphic by Ananya Panchal.
The Met Gala is one of the biggest fashion events of the year. What started as a way to fundraise for the Met’s Costume Institute has become another exclusive event for celebrities to flaunt their wealth while the rest of us can hardly afford gas.
However, what made the Met Gala different from every other red carpet was the theme that guests are required to follow.
In recent years, the lack of effort attendees have put into the theme has made the Gala’s unique excitement fall flat. This May, audiences hoped they’d see a return to creativity since the “Fashion is Art” dress code was so broad that even the most half-hearted look could feign a connection.
So many of the looks this year were undeniably beautiful and painstakingly constructed, but could’ve easily been worn at any ritzy Hollywood party. Take Joey King for example. She wore a custom Miu Miu mesh dress partially embroidered with crystals in flame-like contour lines which covered her body. The pink detailing around the neckline and matching tulle train at the back added some fun to the look.
The dress was perfectly tailored for her, and the mesh could’ve easily looked tacky; instead, it was the right tone and fit to blend into her skin. Despite this, nothing about the look accentuated the theme. An easy reference could’ve been Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” They simply could have dyed her hair a cooler tone and added some pearlescence anywhere in the look and called it a day.
It was nice to see her shine after years of red carpet faux pas, but nothing about this was related to art on the body. It felt like she, and many others, cared more about looking good than honoring the history of fashion.
Margot Robbie’s custom Chanel look was similarly complicit in the theme blindness. It was a gold metallic drop waist dress with a bustled train and flowers around the hem that looked incredible on her—as any dress that took 761 hours to make should. In less capable hands, the lamé style can look cheap and more like spandex, but here the coolness of the gold and subtle sheen in the fabric made it look elevated and opulent.
If they leaned into the color and made it more bronze, they could’ve at least claimed to be referencing ancient sculpture. She would’ve fit in perfectly with the ten other guests who swathed themselves in gauzy fabric hoping to be compared to a Greek goddess. You could argue that the dress itself is the art piece, but that’s not really what the theme was about.
It was about celebrating movements that have come before and exploring the body’s connection to fashion. At any other event, these dresses would be enough for a celebrity to look good, but at the Met Gala, we expected more.
No celebrity met these expectations better than Heidi Klum. In her full-body recreation of the sculpture “Veiled Vestal” by Raffaele Monti, she looked absolutely terrifying, but at least she was doing something interesting and drew inspiration from art. Despite the dress being made of soft foam latex, it looked hard to the touch, much like how the marble draped “fabric” of the real piece appeared.
Every part of her, except for her eyes, which were sunken into her face (hence the terror), was covered in the same material, entirely transforming her into the statue. The risks she took showed what fashion and art can do, and the look was a breath of fresh air amidst many celebrities’ suffocating need to appear beautiful at every moment.
While it wasn’t all bad, this year’s Met Gala was mostly another night for rich people to stand around in nice clothes. This raises the question of whether an event that is so out of touch with the rest of the world is necessary at all. At least before, there was the allure of championing fashion. Without that, it just feels dystopian to watch powerful people playing dress-up while the economy crashes.
