Met gala

Tuesday

Sarah Beth Spraggins

Who says Lauren Sánchez Bezos doesn’t belong at the Met Gala?

Lauren Sánchez Bezos, with her blown-out lip filler, understands fashion. She understands that, unlike the gatekeepers of painting and literature, fashion figureheads aren’t ashamed to dirty their hands by digging around in the money pot. It was only fitting, then, that Lauren and her husband Jeff Bezos sponsored this year's Met Gala. Its theme was "Fashion Is Art." All Kardashian-Jenners present came in bodices protruding in the shape of their nipples Sánchez Bezos showed up to the Met red carpet in a navy-blue gown that nodded to John Singer Sargent's painting of Madame X, a socialite and the wife of a French banker. The painting's portrayal of a pale, corpse-like, high-society woman was considered indecent because of the single strap falling off her shoulder.

Saturday

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

The Met’s ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ is equally horrifying and inspiring

One of the first pieces exhibited in Superfine: Tailoring Black Style – The Met’s annual spring Costume Institute exhibition – is a small and faded tan wool livery coat, most likely created by Brooks Brothers, the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in the States. On its website the New York-based Brooks Brothers proudly claims that since it was founded in 1818 it has dressed no less than “39 presidents, along with industry leaders and cultural innovators.” What it doesn’t say it that it also dressed southern slaves. The mid-19th century tan coat was worn by a black enslaved child, just before the Civil War, at a time when household servants reflected their owner’s status.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Did Kamala Harris ‘stun’ at the Met Gala?

Met Gala turns @TheDemocrats into @PopCrave Celebrities from the music industry, the NFL and Hollywood joined Kamala Harris at the annual Met Gala fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. In an embarrassing tweet emulating viral celebrity accounts such as @PopCrave, @TheDemocrats (yes, the official social media account for the entire Democratic party) wrote, “Kamala Harris stuns at the Met Gala.” The defeated presidential candidate wore a black and white dress in a possible homage to Cruella de Vil. Despite the online slavering at DNC HQ, Emily Smith notes elsewhere in The Spectator that Harris’s audience might have been on the other coast.

kamala harris met gala
Emily Smith

Kamala chooses the Met Gala over the presidency

It was typical Kamala. Did she really want to be at the Met Gala or not? She couldn’t seem to make up her mind. So the candidate that the Democratic party thought could beat Donald Trump in the race to be US president skipped the red carpet, slipped in a backdoor of the Metropolitan Museum and posted a photo of herself in a black and white silk gown on social mediaThe look in her eye as she stared at the camera was pure uncertainty. Had she just stepped on another landmine, obvious to everyone else but her? The caption on the photo tweeted from the Democrats account may have read, “Kamala Harris stuns at the Met Gala,” but that is not how most Americans will view it.

Saturday

Emily Smith

The Met Gala flirts with MAGA

The Met Gala, hosted by the almighty Anna Wintour, will see the world’s most fashionable float up the red carpet on May 5 in New York City. The throngs of designers, models, influencers and celebrities who manage to get the golden-ticket invitation must dress in a style inspired by the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” This theme is inspired from Monica Miller’s 2009 book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.” Dandyism, we’re told, has its origins in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the 18th century when slaves were dressed up in an extravagant fashion to please their master’s aesthetic.

met gala

Wednesday

Ross Anderson

The best and worst of the 2024 Met Gala

On Monday night, celebrities, designers and the highest edges of New York’s upper crust attended the biggest party of the fashion calendar, the Met Gala. Given its supposed importance, you’d think the looks would always be fantastic; that it would be a night for designers to compete for the best, most creative, most glamorous couture. The reality is a lot more disappointing. There are only ever a few truly standout looks, with most being bland at best — and when designers bother to follow the theme, it’s usually in a painfully uncreative manner. The message of the Met Gala should be that the fashion industry is filled with incredible creative talent. But it usually just tells you that money doesn’t buy taste; nor does being employed by Chanel.

met gala

Sunday

Ross Anderson

The legacy of Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel

Monday night marks the fashion calendar’s most overrated, overcovered event: the Met Gala. Each year it’s the same. The outfits are underwhelming (unless they’re worn Rihanna). The publicity stunts are boring. Its political outbursts are predictable and hypocritical. Most disappointing, the theme of this ultimate costume party is either uninteresting, completely ignored or both. But Monday promises something different, or at least above average. Its theme is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” in tribute to the late fashion design icon, who revived Chanel and made it one of the greatest houses, and businesses, in Paris. An exhibition examining the work of Lagerfeld will run at the Met from May 5 to June 16.

Karl Lagerfeld chanel

Friday

Cockburn

AOC’s ethical fashion disaster

The Office of Congressional Ethics referred Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the House Ethics Committee Thursday to investigate “impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021.” This is no surprise for Cockburn — any committed socialist should be causing trouble and smashing the system from within! Ocasio-Cortez caused a stir when she appeared at the gala in a dress saying “Tax the Rich”. For months, AOC’s campaign was receiving emails from providers seeking remuneration for clothing, lodging, transport and hair styling, among other services given to the congresswoman. After repeated attempts to get a response from the congresswoman’s staffer, one email said “This invoice is still outstanding and EXTREMELY overdue.

aoc dress gala ethics

Sunday

Francesca Peacock

The unsolved mystery of Marilyn Monroe

When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Ball back in May, the world was aghast. Many claimed the dress was damaged (something the owners deny), and the dress’s original designer, Bob Mackie, told the world it was a “big mistake," saying, “Nobody else should be seen in that dress.” Some of the concerns came from the fact that Kim Kardashian had had to lose a significant amount of weight to fit the blonde bombshell’s proportions — the dress was so tight on Monroe that she'd had to be sewn into it — and that it set a dangerous precedent for the preservation of historical costumes.

Thursday

Batya Ungar-Sargon

Why progressive politics is like air travel

I was recently flown cross-country on a first-class ticket by a very kind outfit. It was my first time flying up front, and I told myself to make a note of everything in case it proved to be my last. Early in the flight, I noticed that I didn’t want the plane to land. It was a curious feeling and became harder and harder to ignore as the journey progressed. To be sure, the seat was not more comfortable than my easy chair at home. The food was not as good as the food at home. And the wine was certainly nice (it comes in a glass in first class; who knew?), but it wasn’t as good as the wine at home. So why didn’t I want that plane to land?

progressives

Tuesday

Chadwick Moore

AOC is a hot glue-gun mess

I get what socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought she was doing. She shows up to the Met Gala, the glitziest event of the year, where tickets are upwards of $30,000 and a table can run nearly a quarter of a million bucks, wearing a white dress with the words ‘Tax the Rich’ scrawled along the back. How cute, she thinks she’s trolling, you know, like the kids do. Except none of the kids on her side are any good at it. AOC, their leader, also proved Monday evening she doesn’t understand how a joke works. That put her in good company. Increasingly like the pop stars and celebrities she spent the evening hobnobbing alongside, her dress stunt showed she, too, bleeds tedium. Take, for example, a comparable incident from last week.

aoc
carolyn maloney 2021 met gala
Alexander Larman

The smug self-satisfaction of the Met Gala

Oscar Wilde said, of the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, that ‘you would have to have a heart of stone to read...without laughing.’ It was hard not to feel the same way today, as pictures of last night’s Met Gala were released to a curious international public. The point of the event, where tickets sell for a suitably jaw-dropping $30,000, is nominally to raise money for selected good causes, and to mark the opening of the museum’s major costume exhibition. Yet every year, the invited celebrities become more absurd, and their outfits more demonstrative and performative.

aoc dress gala ethics
Dominic Green

In defense of AOC’s Met Gala dress

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looked radiant on the red carpet at the Met Gala. She looked elegant too, at least until she turned around. But this is show business. And that, after the last 18 months, is reassuring: this is still America. Also still American is the message that she delivered at the Met through the medium of a decorated wedding dress. It’s an important one, about class and the future of this country. And no one in politics since Donald Trump is better placed to deliver it. Ocasio-Cortez is proof that the prosperity gospel lives. Like an old-time starlet equipped only with moxie and a major in Theater Studies, she has risen to the top. It is only right that she shares her success with her public, just as the stars of the Depression years shared theirs.