So, the Met Gala has rolled around again, with the predictability of death, taxes and the knowledge that some of the world’s most tedious celebrities will be photographed wearing some frankly bizarre outfits. As with the Oscars, the gala is a display of how deeply unfair it is to be a woman at these events. Men turn up, traditionally, in inoffensive displays of black tie, although this year’s theme of ‘costume art’ saw Colman Domingo appear in what looked like a Wetherspoons carpet and the 32-year-old Bad Bunny decided to anticipate old age by dressing like a man in his late seventies, complete with silver hair and grandfather make-up. God knows why.
However, these things seemed like good taste and restraint compared to some of the horrors sported by the female guests. Beyoncé’s bejewelled skeleton ‘look’ was at least original, even if it was disturbing, and Anna Wintour’s green, feathered Chanel concoction made her look like a particularly malevolent bird of prey. I know that the point is not for those attending the Met Gala to exhibit any kind of restraint, and for the world’s leading fashion houses to show off their wares, but every single year there is a new horror to be shuddered at, even as the word ‘influencer’ adds its rank toxicity to the assembled guests.
This year’s gala met with some controversy through its sponsorship by America’s Second Most Evil Man, Jeff Bezos, and Meryl Streep boycotted the event in protest: a bigger story than it might have been, given her starring role in The Devil Wears Prada 2, essentially playing a warmer, cosier avatar of Wintour. Yet Streep’s well-judged absence from the pageantry meant that she was not offered the opportunity to humiliate herself that her peers rushed to embrace. I wonder how many of them woke up the next day, saw photographs of themselves looking like idiots, and remarked, quite reasonably, to their partners/managers/dealers ‘What the hell was I thinking?’.
Still, despite the involvement of the very British Wintour in masterminding the Met Gala, it remains a very American phenomenon, rather like Thanksgiving and school shootings. It is, thankfully, inconceivable that there will ever be a British equivalent, for the simple reason that our national irony-o-meter would not allow it to be taken at all seriously. While, of course, our national celebrities are A-list famous across the globe and would be just at home in an event here as they would be in New York, there is always the likelihood that the organisers might have to dig a little deeper to find a motley crew of influencers, reality television show stars and the unjustly well-known to swell the ranks. And, of course, it is sod’s law that James Corden would be present, probably reprising his unloved role as Bustopher Jones in the equally unloved film of Cats.
Meryl Streep’s well-judged absence from the pageantry meant that she was not offered the opportunity to humiliate herself that her peers rushed to embrace
No, it is better that we have never had a Brit Gala. But that’s not to say that people have not tried. In his role as Chair of the British Museum, George Osborne – possibly the only man in London who would actually want his own Met Gala – organized a Pink Ball fundraising gala last year, which attracted the likes of Mick Jagger, Tracey Emin and Naomi Campbell. However, the event was reassuringly parochial despite Osborne’s clear ambitions for it. Not only were the invitation-only tickets relatively affordable (a snip at £2500, compared to $100,000 for one for the Met Gala) but things went awry when Osborne was confronted on stage by an activist from Climate Resistance, telling the former politician-turned-jack of all trades to ditch BP as the museum’s sponsor. The rabble-rouser was soon bundled away, and even though an apparently unflustered Osborne brushed the interruption aside by saying ‘It’s great to live in a democracy’, the interruption decisively overshadowed the £2.5 million raised for charity, or, to be more precise, ‘the British Museum’s international partnerships’.
I can only imagine what Wintour would have done if she had had her moment of glory similarly interrupted by a protester. If they hadn’t been turned to stone by a basilisk stare from beneath her omnipresent dark glasses, it is likely that they would have been taken away and ‘dealt with’ by the ever-vigilant security staff. The British Museum protestor – who gained admission by having been hired to work as a waitress – was simply evicted from the building, her point made.
And that is the difference between the Met Gala – absurd, self-serious and devoid of irony – and anything that we try and do over here. Something will always go awry, because that is the English way, and the best we can do is laugh and shrug it off. In New York, however, the well-drilled professionalism of the event cannot obscure its essential grimness and navel-gazing – that is, if most of its skeletal participants can move their Botoxed features enough to contemplate their own nipped-and-tucked stomachs. Every year, it gets a little worse, and a little more embarrassing. And every year, I feel ever more grateful that it is a purely American cause of shame, and nothing to do with us.
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