MetGala was parade of ‘influencers’ that boggled the mind
Watching a parade of stars whom most people have never heard of displaying their evening “attire” at the annual Met
Gala in Manhattan, I naturally wondered what I might have worn had I, too, been released from the asylum.
Just because I recognized only 8% of the red-carpet armada doesn’t mean these gettogethers don’t matter to someone. It must be a generational thing.
Tastes change. And how. And nothing changes more dramatically than taste in fashion — and the fashionable. Not so long ago, polite society dictated the rules to which others aspired. Today, we discover, it’s “influencers” — TikTokers and YouTubers who hold the keys to the kingdom. Suffice to say, today’s Met Gala is not the playground of Diana Vreeland, Pat Buckley and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The annual bash was founded in 1948 to support what’s now the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Vreeland served for a time as consultant to the event after being tossed out as editor in chief at Vogue. Today, longtime Vogue boss Anna Wintour presides over the affair with her journalist’s eye for fashion and cultural trends.
Thus, the theme this year was “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” and I for one was lost for words at times. Trying to describe the costumes on display Monday night would exhaust my store of adjectives. I half expected to hear the bugle call of a horse race with each star’s entrance. I would hardly have been surprised to see Beetlejuice spring from beneath one of several skirts that were large enough to house a family of hobbits.
Instead, we were treated to a parade of political demonstrators whose eccentric garb sometimes garbled the message. If you haven’t heard, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wore an off-the-shoulder white gown with a political message painted in large, blood-red letters across her backside: “Tax the Rich.”
What’s a roughly $300,000-per-table dinner party without a political sign slamming the rich?
Several other political statements arrived in human form. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., wore a dress with “Equal Rights for Women” sashes. Dan Levy of “Schitt’s Creek” fame showed up looking like a butterfly wearing a map to celebrate “queer love and queer visibility.”
And YouTube star and transgender beauty guru Nikkie de Jager (she has more than 13 million subscribers) was a vision in teal chiffon with flowers in her hair, flowers everywhere. Her dress was a tribute, she said, to Marsha Johnson, a gay liberation activist and drag queen who featured prominently in the 1969 Stonewall uprising.
Everybody’s got a cause these days, including at least one former attendee who regretted for political reasons. Rapper Nicki Minaj, objecting to the gala’s requirement that everyone be vaccinated, tweeted: “They want you to get vaccinated for the Met. If I get vaccinated it won’t (be) for the Met. It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research. I’m working on that now.”
Frivolity and frills surely have their place, and sometimes we need a break from the daily assault of bad news. But this year’s gala seemed conspicuously tonedeaf, coming just two days after the 20th anniversary of 9/11 (did no one check the calendar?) and amid the renewed march of a strengthened pandemic.
If one must go political, at least try to think beyond oneself. What would I have worn? I can’t swear I’m this brave, but I’d like to think I’d have worn a burqa in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan, as well as the millions of other women around the world who are routinely denied basic human rights by primitiveminded, religion-fueled monsters masquerading as heroes.
Imagine what Wintour could have done with a theme like that. To make things festive, designers could have enhanced the burqa to illustrate the beauty of the women lost and withering beneath the folds of their captivity. Maybe at an appointed hour, everyone could remove the burqa to reveal a creation worthy of the Met’s costume collection and get on with the dance.
Such a night would be less of a show, to be sure, but it would pack a powerful wallop — for all the world to see.