Met Gala 2017 – Famous People In Famous Clothes
As the sun sets on the week that was the Met Gala, I thought I’d share my thoughts and play fashion police (because everyone has an opinion, including me) offering up my favourite looks, and reflections on this enigma of the celebrity world, that dominates the internet for a fleeting moment.
For those of you who aren’t that interested in the fashion world, the Gala is Anna Wintour’s -the resident editor in chief of Vogue- chance to remind us she’s the ruler of the fashion world, and invites an exclusive, yet large amount of celebrities, influencers and rich kids in general, to join her in a fundraising benefit, celebrating the opening of the annual fashion exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. A theme is announced in October the year before, that parallel’s the exhibition, and I conjure up a dramatic image of all the invitees reacting theatrically before running to call their stylists.
I can feel my tone may be coming off as dismissive or sarcastic, but I honestly love the Met Gala and in fact if it sounds bitter, it’s probably because I wish it were me.
It’s one big costume ball for charity, and when you overlook the wealth of these people, it's actually a nice premise. Again, not being sarcastic, I'm just a sucker.
And in today’s world filled with societal divisions and crises, it’s easy to look at something so elitist and excessive as the Met Ball and call it absurd, and it is.
But it’s also a bit of fun and frivolity, and I’m pretty sure celebrities were invented as distractions from the real world for us mere mortals, and as a lover of fashion, I’ll take it. It is a marker of our bizarre 21st century, and produces some of the best memes; see Rhianna’s dress from 2014, and some iconic moments like the bathroom selfie. I think we love to watch on as it unfolds and as real, or inflated, celebrity drama goes down -the press imagines how on earth Bella Hadid managed to avoid The Weeknd who was attending with his new girlfriend, Selena Gomez- because they epitomise youth culture and our digital age.
The very idea of the most famous faces of “right-now” piling into a bathroom together to, “get that Instagram pic” and seeing 20-something’s, who probably never got a formal or a prom, run amuck in thousand dollar outfits which will never see the light of day again, is as ridiculous as it is amusing. But I can’t help but love it.
This year’s theme was Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, and proved to be open to interpretation. From extravagant and overgrown gowns, to a very avant-garde Jaden Smith holding a fistful of his own hair, it had it all.
See some of my personal favourites below.
