The Met Gala — the informal name for the Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — takes place tonight and, as always, I am bitter about not being an invitee. Not because I want to rub elbows with celebrities and billionaires, but because I LOVE theme dressing and I LOVE to shop my closet and if Conde Nast editor and host Anna Wintour really cares about fashion SHE SHOULD LET ME BE GREAT!
This is especially true because so many of the attendees regularly blow their opportunity to let their freak flag fly by dressing for a regular red carpet. The 2013 party, which celebrated the opening of the Met’s “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” exhibit was the recent nadir of Met Gala theme dressing. I managed to find two outfits that lived up to my expectations — thank you, Miley Cyrus and Linda Fargo — but I would have done the full Wendy O. Williams look if given the opportunity.
This year’s theme is even closer to my heart than punk. The exhibit, which opens to regular mortals on Thursday, is called “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” and it examines how “irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration are expressed in fashion.” They’re just throwing it in my face at this point. I mean, my peeps, I wore this dress in public for a New Year’s Eve dinner I hosted because I thought it was highlarious.
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Click for 2010 post.
Click for my original 2011 post.
Not everyone appreciates my taste. I still brood over the way a very high-fashion person once described my vintage dollar-bill printed dress as a “novelty item.” (I wonder if that person described Balenciaga’s dollar print — seen on the runway in 2017 — in the same tone of voice.)
Click for original 2016 post.
From some advance photos I’ve seen, it looks like both floof and butt bows feature in the “Camp” exhibit, so I finally have something in common with Kanye West: Feeling like an underappreciated visionary. All I can say that if next year’s Met Gala theme is “Ruffles,” I will know this is a personal attack and IT’S ON, BITCHES!
Anyway, stay tuned for my post on the 2019 Met Gala’s Best Dressed/Wear What You Want winner.
You and I share the same campy taste! I wish people would just say “Fuck it!” and wear something fun and interesting! Red carpets feel so boring these past decades!
I love that dollar dress – I’d wear that too! I have yet to find my “ne plus ultra” campy dress, though. You are still Camp Queen, Wendy!
There were some really good looks tonight, so I’m pleased! Whew! Maybe the punk gala was rock bottom and it’s all up from there 🙂