From Catholicism to camp: New Met Gala theme out
New York: Next year's Met Gala will be downright campy. No, seriously: The Metropolitan Museum announced Tuesday that "Camp: Notes on Fashion" will be the title of its next blockbuster spring Costume Institute exhibit. The exhibit is launched each year by the star- studded Met Gala, where attendees are encouraged to dress according to the prescribed theme. The museum said in a statement that the exhibit will get its framework from a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag, "Notes on ' Camp.'"
The show “will examine how fashion designers have used their métier as a vehicle to engage with camp in a myriad of compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways,” it said.
The Met Gala, formally known as the Costume Institute Benefit, is always chaired by a team of high- wattage celebrities, and next year will be no exception. The May 6 affair, to be underwritten by Gucci, will be chaired by pop star and actress- ofthemoment Lady Gaga, tennis star Serena Williams, and singer Harry Styles, along with Gucci designer Alessandro Michele and, as always, Vogue editor Anna Wintour. The new theme seems decidedly more lighthearted than last year's hugely successful "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," about the relationship between fashion and Catholicism.
That sumptuous, sprawling show drew more visitors than any Costume Institute exhibit — more than 1.3 million to the Met's main Fifth Avenue location.