Excess! Extravagance! Eyeballs! Reviewing the fashions of the night at the gala benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
And so to the question of Monday night’s Met Gala in New York City: Could anyone top Rihanna’s appearance last year as the Pope, complete with bejeweled robe and miter, when it comes to red carpet camp?
As if you had to ask. The night largely seemed to be a game of entrance-making one-upmanship, a raising of the stakes of sartorial absurdity higher and higher until the point of it got lost somewhere under a thousand acres of taffeta and a couple of severed heads.
What is camp, by this definition? It is dress gone so far into the realm of costume that it may never find its way home. It is an unabashed attempt to break the internet. The dress code may have been “studied triviality,” but its expression was most often “extravagant literalism.”
Seriously: Katy Perry came as a Moschino crystal chandelier. She lit up the night.
Susan Sontag wrote in the essay that started it all that camp was a “woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.” Great! They’ll give us feathers! In fact, feathered outerwear may have been the trend of the night.
It started with Anna Wintour, the artistic director of Condé Nast and a co-host, doing a relatively subtle impression of a pink flamingo (there was a lot of pink, to match the carpet) in a Chanel cape, and got bigger and brighter from there. Amber Valletta wore neon green Saint Laurent feathers over a black bodysuit; Yara Shahidi, a black Prada feathered coat over a sparkly onesie; Lizzo, multicolored Marc Jacobs plumes; and Kendall and Kylie Jenner orange and purple feather-festooned Versace, so they looked sort of like the cabaret versions of the mean stepsisters in Disney’s “Cinderella.”
Right on cue, Zendaya showed up in an actual light-up Cinderella frock, courtesy of Tommy Hilfiger, to join the club.
Speaking of feathers, however, Billy Porter trumped them all (pun intended) when he was carried in on a litter born by six shirtless gold-trousered men. A golden Cleopatra Folies Bergère cap on his head, he then emerged from his position to display a sparking bodysuit dripping in more gold and unfurl enormous golden wings from The Blonds: Liberace liberated.
Mr. Porter’s only real competition in the theater of arrivals was Lady Gaga, a co-host, whose Brandon Maxwell-designed four-in-one striptease from giant fuchsia gown to black silver screen sheath to hot pink lady to undies covered in 7,200 Swarovski crystals, was, ironically, one of the subtler and more subversive takes on camp of the night — a takedown of the act of costume dressing itself, and the expectations now attached to this particular event.
But subtlety was in short supply, really, a few guests aside: Danai Gurira, in top hat, cane (there were a lot of canes) and plunging jumpsuit by Gabriela Hearst; Zoë Kravitz in a black Saint Laurent with a completely cutout heart at the bodice. Harry Styles, another co-host, in his Guccified embrace of the contrapposto stance, sheer lace-trimmed shirt, corset and black trousers serving as a relatively quieter contrast to the pink ruffled fantasia of his fellow co-host, the Gucci designer Alessandro Michele.
Instead, there were trains! The bigger and longer the better (see: Nicki Minaj-as-Marie Antoinette). There were a lot of headdresses. The best was Cara Delevingne’s bananas-meets-chattering-teeth-meets-candy eyeballs confection, atop an LGBTQ rainbow-striped Dior message. Sorry, playsuit and matching tights.
There were also heads: Jared Leto, in long red Gucci silk, carried a copy of his own, the way models had on the Gucci runway last year; Ezra Miller, in crystal harness and dandy pinstripes, toted a mask on a stick, playing peekaboo with the seven eyes batting their eyelashes on his face. Blink and you couldn’t miss them. Or Janelle Monáe, and her winking Christian Siriano-designed hats-off ode to Surrealism.
What else? Capes: lots of them (Hamish Bowles of Vogue in Maison Margiela Artisanal wins this one). Bows: big ones. Fringe (hello, Celine Dion in Oscar de la Renta). And characters.
Mermaids and fairy princesses popped up, too. Saoirse Ronan came as Hot Wheels, the Gucci version, and actually looked pretty great. Kacey Musgraves did Barbie. Kim Kardashian West came as rain, in custom Manfred Thierry Mugler (kudos to her for picking one of the original designers of modern camp). Cardi B came … as … viscera? In a pool of blood-red Thom Browne, with 30,000 burned and dyed coque feathers and 44-carat Stefere ruby nipples.
Trying to keep track of it all started to be exhausting.
In any other gathering, Emily Blunt’s 24-karat Michael Kors Goldfinger floral frock would have qualified as over-the-top, but in this crowd, it looked positively normal. And as for those who seemed to have opted out, like Gisele Bündchen in pleated lamé, and Gwyneth Paltrow in some sort of Chloé nightie, not to mention the men who just wore the usual tux — they barely registered. How dare they disappoint us! cried the internet. Is that what this was for?
Increasingly, it seems as though the answer is yes. Once inside, presumably all the guests in their crazy get-ups stripped off into relatively normal clothes so they could sit and eat and not face-plant over each other’s trains. The back of Lena Waithe’s Pyer Moss zoot suit had a message — “Black drag queens invented camp” — and though the Met’s exhibition pretty much argues otherwise (it traces camp back to pre-Versailles), whatever the potential politics of this whole venture, they were completely swamped by the excess.
It’s supposed to be “fun,” Ms. Wintour said at the start of the evening, talking about the theme and maybe the event itself, and there’s no question, it was fun to watch it all unfurl. Or rather, it was, more often than not, funny: celebrities turned into caricatures of a parody of an idea.
Were we laughing with them, or at them? My guess is the latter, at least most of the time. They were sacrificing themselves for our own poisonous pleasure, and the associate clickbait that will allow different brands to claim they — not the people involved — won the night.
The Met has turned party dressing into a competitive event. Camp as an expression of self has power and substance, but this was mostly camp as an expression of commerce and fame.
Despite all the clothes, camp denuded.
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Dimitrios Kambouris
Nicki Minaj in Prabal Gurung.
2/103
Dia Dipasupil
Jennifer Lopez in Versace.
3/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Gwen Stefani in Moschino by Jeremy Scott.
4/103
David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock
Elle Fanning in Miu Miu.
5/103
By Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Celine Dion in Oscar de la Renta.
6/103
Dia Dipasupil
Ciara in Dundas.
7/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Cardi B in Thom Browne.
8/103
Dia Dipasupil
Cara Delevingne in Dior Haute Couture.
9/103
By Theo Wargo
Janelle Monáe in Christian Siriano.
10/103
John Shearer
Kristen Stewart in Chanel.
11/103
Dia Dipasupil
Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas in Louis Vuitton.
12/103
Neilson Barnard
Zoe Kravitz in Saint Laurent.
13/103
Evan Agostini
Katy Perry in Moschino.
14/103
Karwai Tang
Kendall Jenner in Versace.
15/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Lily Rose Depp in in Chanel.
16/103
Mike Coppola/MG19
Tessa Thompson in Chanel Haute Coutur, Trevor Noah in Off-White, and Lupita Nyong’o in Versace.
17/103
Karwai Tang
Emma Roberts in Giambattista Valli Couture.
18/103
Dia Dipasupil
Sophie Von Haselberg and Bette Midler in Michael Kors.
19/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Dua Lipa in Versace.
20/103
Neilson Barnard
Priyanka Chopra in Dior Haute Couture and Nick Jonas in Dior Men.
21/103
Dia Dipasupil
Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre in Versace.
22/103
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Salma Hayek in Gucci.
23/103
Dia Dipasupil
Gal Gadot in Givenchy.
24/103
Neilson Barnard
RuPaul.
25/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Solange Knowles in Salvatore Ferragamo.
26/103
Theo Wargo
Bella Hadid in in Moschino and Jeremy Scott.
27/103
John Shearer
Lily Collins in Giambattista Valli Haute Couture.
28/103
John Shearer
Kim Kardashian in Thierry Mugler and Kanye West.
29/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Robyn in Louis Vuitton.
30/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Michael Urie in Christian Sirano.
31/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Penelope Cruz in Chanel.
32/103
Dia Dipasupil
Stella Maxwell in Moschino.
33/103
ANGELA WEISS
Naomi Campbell in Valentino.
34/103
Neilson Barnard
Tom Brady in Tom Ford and Gisele Bündchen in Dior.
35/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Hailee Steinfeld in Viktor & Rolf.
36/103
John Shearer
Zazie Beetz in Thom Browne.
37/103
Neilson Barnard
Lily Aldridge in Richard Quinn.
38/103
John Shearer
Winnie Harlow in Tommy Hilfiger.
39/103
Dia Dipasupil
Kylie Jenner in Versace.
40/103
Mike Coppola/MG19
Kerry Washington in Tory Burch.
41/103
Theo Wargo
Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter in ROKSANDA.
42/103
ANGELA WEISS
Julianne Moore in Valentino.
43/103
Neilson Barnard
Julia Garner in Zac Posen.
44/103
John Shearer
Josephine Skriver in Jonathan Simkhai.
45/103
John Shearer
Alicia Vikander in Louis Vuitton.
46/103
Neilson Barnard
Jennifer Connely in Louis Vuitton.
47/103
Neilson Barnard
Irina Shayk in Burberry.
48/103
Neilson Barnard
Imaan Hammam in Dundas.
49/103
Dia Dipasupil
Hari Nef in Gucci.
50/103
John Shearer
Halsey in Prabal Gurung.
51/103
ANGELA WEISS
Hailey Bieber in Alexander Wang.
52/103
John Shearer
Gwyneth Paltrow in Chloé.
53/103
Theo Wargo
54/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Ezra Miller in Burberry.
56/103
John Shearer
Emily Ratajkowski in Dundas.
57/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union in Dundas.
58/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Dakota Johnson in Gucci.
59/103
John Shearer
Candice Swanepoel and Joan Smalls in Prabal Gurung.
60/103
Neilson Barnard
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz in Carolina Herrera.
61/103
Karwai Tang
Serena Williams in Versace; jewelry by de Grisogono.
62/103
By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Frank Ocean in Prada.
63/103
John Shearer
Saoirse Ronan in Gucci.
64/103
By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.
Billy Porter in The Blonds.
65/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Awkwafina in Altuzarra.
66/103
Dia Dipasupil
Yara Shahidi in Prada.
67/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Harry Styles and Alessandro Michele in Gucci .
68/103
From Getty Images.
Lady Gaga in Brandon Maxwell and Linda Farrow sunglasses.
69/103
By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.
Jemima Kirke and Lena Dunham in Christopher Kane.
70/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Rachel Brosnahan in Erdem.
71/103
By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.
Jared Leto in Gucci.
72/103
Dia Dipasupil
21 Savage in Dapper Dan.
73/103
Neilson Barnard
Mindy Kaling in Casadei.
74/103
Dia Dipasupil
Taron Egerton in Ferragamo.
75/103
Neilson Barnard
Laverne Cox in Christian Siriano.
76/103
Dia Dipasupil
Sara Sampaio in August Getty Atelier.
77/103
Jamie McCarthy
Omari Hardwick.
78/103
Dia Dipasupil
Ashley Graham in Dapper Dan for Gucci.
79/103
Jamie McCarthy
Karlie Kloss Dapper Dan for Gucci.
80/103
Jamie McCarthy
Richard Madden in Dior Men.
81/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Regina Hall in Gucci.
82/103
Neilson Barnard
Wendi Murdoch.
83/103
Jamie McCarthy
Dapper Dan.
84/103
Neilson Barnard
Caroline Trentini in Thom Browne.
85/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Bevy Smith in Kimberly Goldson; cape by Dapper Dan for Gucci with Swarovski crystals.
86/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
French Montana.
87/103
Neilson Barnard
Ava DuVernay in Prada.
88/103
Neilson Barnard
Aquaria Maison Martin Margiela.
89/103
Jamie McCarthy
Ryan Murphy in Christian Siriano.
90/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Tommy and Dee Hilfiger.
91/103
Theo Wargo
Jordan Roth in Iris Van Herpen.
92/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Tiffany Haddish in Michael Kors.
93/103
John Shearer
Sofía Sanchez Barrenechea in Mango.
94/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Ashton Sanders
95/103
Neilson Barnard
Natasha Lyonne in Jean Paul Gaultier.
96/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Paloma Elsesser in Panconesi.
97/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Liu Wen in Thom Browne.
98/103
Dia Dipasupil
Kris Jenner in Tommy Hilfiger.
99/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Florence Welch in Gucci.
100/103
Jamie McCarthy
Camila Morrone in Elie Saab Haute Couture.
101/103
Neilson Barnard
Darren Criss in Balmain.
102/103
Dimitrios Kambouris
Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin in Prada.
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