Mila Ottevanger explores the less than triumphal return about the Oscars of fashion, and what the lackluster exhibition and red carpet say about the fashion industry today.
Picture Christmas morning. You clatter down the stairs with all the grace and decorum of a reversing dump truck with no tyres on, and rip open the biggest box under the tree. Inside is…
‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.’
‘What?’ you demand, in your best Dudley Dursley impression.* ‘I got this in 1974 and 1975 and also sort of in 2001 and definitely 2010 and also again kind of in 2014? How much more,’ you yell at your parents (one of whom is refusing to remove her giant black sunglasses), ‘can you wring out of this tired old rag? What am I getting next year?’ you ask, as your parents divert their gaze (so far as you can tell, given those huge glasses) and mutter, shamefacedly, ‘In America: An Anthology of Fashion.’
Surely American Women: Fashioning a National Identity and Charles James: Beyond Fashion covered this? Even Jackie Kennedy: The White House Years was only 20 years ago. It wasn’t the (admittedly tiresome) American focus that put me off, but rather the unconquerable breadth of the assignment. It’s certainly due time for a retrospective of Patrick Kelly, or even an exhibit on the school of Modernist-Grunge Asian American design, but when I think of American fashion as a single entity, I draw a blank – not because of a dearth of inspiration, but rather the sheer landslide of it.
I suppose I’ll start with what I consider this year’s thematic wins, those which combined the theme of the exhibit with ingenuity and invention:
– Quannah Chasinghorse in that gold lamé stunner with traditional Navajo jewellery (wearing a Peter Dundas dress and turquoise lent from a former Miss Navajo Nation, Jocelyn-Billy Upshaw)
– Gemma Chan, paying tribute to Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American Hollywood star, in Prabal Gurung
– Lupita Nyong’o, in a denim gown by Versace inspired by 90s Americana and Western Films
– Jeremy Pope, in a look dedicated to the cotton garments worn by enslaved African Americans on plantations by the Australian designer Dion Lee.
– Barbie Ferreira, in a Jonathan Simkhai pearl-draped hedonistic 1920s dream a la Rihanna in 2018 (i.e. the best Met Gala Year)
– Nikki DeJager, in a vibrant dress honouring American hero Marsha P. Johnson by Dutch designer Edwin Oudshoorn
– Yara Shahidi as Josephine Baker in Dior with glittering diamonds by Cartier, the French designers playing homage to the Black American Jazz and Modernist icons who lived and worked in Paris
There were other wonderful designs of course: Iris van Herpen’s look for Grimes was otherworldly, regardless of the wearer’s affiliation to a certain emerald-mine owning part-time richest man on earth (same for Tessa Thompson and Gabrielle Union, minus the reservations about El*n Musk). Anok Yai was wearing possibly the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen in my life. Lil Nas X was radiant in gold. Hunter Schafer was ethereal in that spidery headpiece and contacts. And Channing Tatum, of course, showing up in a black suit that was, apparently, an homage to JFK. Go girl, give us nothing! How were any of these part of the American lexicon? Perhaps Carey Mulligan in Barbie Pink (à la Anya Taylor Joy at Cannes) was a nod to both consumerism’s hold on our lives and rampant girlbossery? Anok Yai was part of NASA? Hunter Schafer gave us a glimpse into the future of robotics? I feel a cramp coming on trying to stretch that far.
My reservations about this year’s Gala stem from the wide-open theme that left people both without a solid place to hang their hats but an illusion of freedom that I, self-proclaimed deputy postmaster general / Galactic Overlord of the Met Gala, intrinsically disliked. There were definitely places the theme could have gone – user @jimmygirl on Tumblr, in a post that made it round the social media houses, wrote ‘not a noir detective in sight. no club kid drag. no bruce springsteen fits. no cowboys. no 2000s disney channel girl protags. no baseball uniforms. no 80s crop top jocks. no 50s and 60s retrofuturism.’ But nobody seemed to have the guts to go into these Americana niches. Even the political statements (Cara Delevigne, and, in an even more hotly debated outfit, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) have been critiqued as performative and irrelevant. Just because the theme is about the ‘freest country in the world’ (here I insert the textual equivalent of aggressive side-eye) and wildly open to interpretation does not mean you are free to disregard it and just wear a pretty dress. So says I (this is primarily directed at the people who neither made an effort to do the theme or serve anything approaching a look)! And obviously I am always right about everything.
And now onto the wider implications that I think made this year’s Gala, not to mention NYFW, a yawnfest. I was absolutely rabid about this gala (did anyone else watch those girls on TikTok theorise what people were going to wear by making a giant Post-It display on their wall?) because I’d been starved of Met content since 2019. Since 2018, really, since that was the last time people actually understood the assignment. So, I admit, my expectations were relatively high (though I was still down about the theme). But the pandemic has also pressed accelerate on an already rapid trend cycle. RIP to the 30 or even 20 year rule – trends can last just weeks now. Shein, Zara, Urban Outfitters (the list goes on) steal from independent designers and drop literally thousands of new styles a day. Crucially, everyone was bored, stuck at home, doing fashion shows in bathrobes at 2am, devouring fashion history videos at the speed of light and, in my case, chronically online and convincing myself I’m qualified to write this article. We are a fashion-educated, if rabid mass, and we’re learning more every day. Last year we were cowering before the return of Y2K and low-rise jeans, now I watch as 13 year olds don the Twilight henleys and hoodies I was wearing at their age (admittedly, still wearing them in 2014 was a bit of a loser move, but my point stands). Fashion is moving at light-speed.
To clarify, my problem is specifically with overconsumption, fast fashion, and hauls, not with people finally having some time to figure out the clothes that make them happy and comfortable. I’ve always loved seeing people wear the clothes that make them feel at home in their bodies – personal style over trends forever! But with every trend existing at once, it’s difficult to do something new. The age of the runway is over: cerulean (read in Miranda Priestley’s voice) doesn’t cascade from high to low. The driving factor with the Met Gala’s fault is the same problem with fashion culture at large: the current oversaturation of trends (further emphasized by the lack of standout trends from any recent designer, including last week’s NYFW) suggests that there’s too much going on. In fact, the Met is not only failing because of, but feeding in the larger issues with its broad theming. Everything’s happening, and a body, like the Met, has to be responsible for clearing out space in fashion now.
*No parents were ungratefully yelled at in the making of this author.
