Hello! Ellie and Morwenna from the Guardian’s fashion desk here in London. We’ll be watching theMet Gala– fashion’s Oscars/Baftas/Olympics – so you don’t have to, guiding you through the probable hits and possible misses from a starry guest list which includesZendaya,Ariana Grande,Rihanna, and multipleJenner/Kardashians.
To recap on what you’re watching: as ever, the Met Gala takes place on the first Monday in May as the opening of New York’s Costume Institute exhibition. There is always a theme, and usually some sort of accompanying text, and this year’s it’s called“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,”which will look back at 300 years of Black fashion alongside the history of Black dandyism.
To get you up to speed, do have a read of thisbrilliant pieceby the Guardian’s Sasha Mistlin from earlier this week. Last month, Sasha interviewed Monica L. Miller, whose 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, interrogates of the strategic use of fashion by Black men throughout history, which is the inspiration behind both the exhibition and gala.
The theme is notable for various reasons, not least because it’s the Met’s first ever fashion exhibition devoted entirely to designers of colour so is being viewed by some as a wider effort to incorporate more diversity into the collection. It’s timely too. Previous galas have been criticised for being tone-deaf, little more than peacocking, and a parade of privilege and elitism.
In herpreview piece for the Saturday paper, Jess Cartner-Morley describes this year’s theme as an “intellectually minded celebration of diversity [which] lands at a moment when the Trump administration is pushing back robustly against both diversity and intellectualism”.
However you view it, the event itself has huge cultural and celebrity cachet, helped no end byAnna Wintourand her assembled co-hosts:Colman Domingo,Lewis Hamilton,ASAP RockyandPharrell WilliamswithLeBron Jamesas the honorary chair.
This is handy given the main thrust of the gala is making money. A choice guest list of designers, celebrities and other notables will have bought tickets or a table at great cost. An individual ticket is $75,000, or over £55,ooo, while a table of ten goes for more than a quarter of a million pounds. Donations also roll in from donors. Proceeds then go to the Costume Institute, which is dependent on the gala for its main operating costs, though it’s worth mention that the gala itself costs a lot of put on too … The gala’s arrival is fleeting: stars arrive, walk up the stairs, and disappear inside. There is a party with dinner and music, more on what that involves later. And there is almost always Rihanna.
Fashion-wise, what does that mean? We can probably expect some radical tailoring, a little menswear-as-womenswear, flamboyant spins on the modern dandy and a diverse raft of designers. But what we want to see is a celebration of fashion at its most multicultural, expressive and absurd. Fashion as high art.
We all know that the red carpet is now an economy unto itself, a strangely cultivated branding exercise for celebrities and marketing tool by the fashion industry built on an illusion that the gowns and dandy suits are an expression of a celebrity’s personal style when in fact, they’ve been picked by a stylist. But that doesn’t stop it being wonderful to watch.
No prizes for guessing what the creative director of Louis Vuitton is wearing tonight.
A cropped double breasted jacket in white beading might not sound particularly subversive. It’s black tie with a modish, dandy flavour. But like his predecessor, Virgil Abloh, Williams’ appointment as the head of the biggest menswear fashion brand in the world is a marker of the power of Black cultural capital – not to mention hiphop, class and class politics – on a global scale, so he is a key figure tonight. He’s also a chair. Also, the flares are a great touch.
The night is still oh-so-young and co-chairColman Domingois already onto his second look (still custom Valentino designed by creative director Alessandro Michele), having shed his André Leon Talley-coded cloak in favour of a joyfully pattern-clashing look of grids and polka dots. It’s busy but it works! The polka dots on the brooch have apparently been hand-painted on.
That’s already two looks down – can he beat the total of four different looks that Lady Gaga wore to the 2019Met Gala? Only time will tell.
And lo, we already have our first trend: pinstripes.
Following Teyana’s voluminous zoot suit, here isEmma Chamberlain, who is hosting Vogue’s red carpet coverage, in a deconstructed backless dress and train by Courrèges that manages to reference both the 00s and the jazz age. The silverwear was found by her stylist, Jared Ellner, on eBay. Earlier, the TV reporter Zuri Hall also wore a strapless bustier gown in pinstripe by the American designer, Bishme Cromartie. Pinstripes are a key but fairly safe reference of Black dandyism. Expect we’ll see a lot more tonight.
And here comes another of this year’s co-chairs. Fresh from the heat of Miami, where he has been competing in the Grand Prix, to the steps of the Met…Lewis Hamilton, one of this year’s co-chairs, has arrived wearing what is apparently a custom design by the British designer Grace Wales Bonner. The hat, the brooch; he has not come to play.
Bonner, a 34-year-old London-based menswear designer and the person responsible for bringing the Adidas Samba into modern ubiqiuty, was herself on the committee and also has a number of works in this year’s exhibition.
As you might expect for such a famously intellectual designer, her look for Hamilton is rich with references.As she told Vogue: “For Lewis’s look, we brought together a range of influences, fromBarkley L. Hendrickspaintings, to Black spiritual dressing and some of the brand’s craft signatures. There are stories told through jewel adornments and special trims, with symbolism in baobab flower motifs and natural materials like cowrie shells and mother of pearl buttons.”
A word about the red carpet: it’s rarely red. Last year it was green and white, and this year it’s midnight blue, and dotted with hyper-realistic daffodils to match the fake floral hedge backdrop. The whole thing is then laid over the staircase leading up to The Metropolitan Museum.
You might have seen them in Gossip Girl, The Thomas Crown Affair or Sex and the City. They were only built in 1975 but have long transcended their original purpose as an entrance to become an iconic piece of New York infrastructure and what Elle Deco calls, “New York’sfront porch”.
Here’s a great quote fromTown & Countryby former Costume Institute curator, Harold Koda, who describes them as “like a ziggurat leading up to a building four blocks long. Walking up to the entrance was, for someone interested in art, like scaling the Acropolis.”
Here’sTeyana Taylorin custom Marc Jacobs. What a look: a three piece homage to the Zoot suit (note the high-waisted, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers) with pillowy shoulders, platform heels and a cape with the words: Harlem Rose. Under that hat is a satin durag too.
A bold, provocative getup that subverts gender stereotypes while being a little bit provocative. I just hope she kept the cape out of the rain.
Last yearColman Domingowore work by the designer Willy Chavarria and namechecked the late André Leon Talley as an inspiration behind the look. This year, surely,surelythat bright blue cloak is a reference to Talley’s ownMet Galalook from 2011 when the theme was Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.
But we are likely in for even more sartorial treats from the Met Gala co-chair as the night goes on. Domingo is reportedly collaborating with Alessandro Michele, the Italian creative director of Valentino, for his red carpet looks this year and has hinted that he will wear more than one outfit representing ‘great moments in tailoring for men of colour’.”
Uh oh, time for the gala’s first set back: just a few hours before he was due to step onto the steps as an honorary chair,LeBron Jameshas backed out due to injury sustained during first round of the NBA playoffs.
“Unfortunately because of my knee injury I sustained at the end of the season I won’t be able to attend the Met Gala in NY tonight as so many people have been asking and congratulating me on! Hate to miss an historical event!” he wrote on X.King of the tunnel ‘fit, James was named an honorary chair for the event. Pharrell Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo and A$AP Rocky are however still set to serve as chairs.
One of six athletes named to the committee, James’ injury was later diagnosed as a Grade 2 MCL sprain. Some fans were unclear as to why he couldn’t attend, though a quick glance at the number of steps he’d have to take should answer that. More on the staircase soon.
One thing we can expect from this year’s installation is the fabulous, looming presence of the late André Leon Talley to be played out on the red carpet and beyond. He was, as Anna Wintourwrote in Vogue last month, “a dandy among dandies and he radiated joy.”
Once US Vogue’s editor-at-large and Wintour’s right-hand man,before she reportedly “threw him under the bus”, his Met Gala get-ups – in fact his get-ups in general (he wore full Louis Vuitton to play tennis) – were never inconspicuous or uninteresting, so are sure to provide ample inspiration tonight.
It was, Wintour wrote, “his instinct for self-presentation” that made him so incredible. “He understood that, especially as a Black man, what you wore told a story about you, about your history, about self-respect. And so, for André, getting dressed was an act of autobiography, and also mischief and fantasy, and so much else at once.”
He gave up attending the Met Gala himself,writing in his explosive memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, how he left his final Met Gala mid-evening: “I stood up. Vera Wang asked where I was going; I told her the men’s room, but instead I swept and swirled down the back corridors of the Met to my waiting car. On the way home, I swore to myself:I will never attend another Anna Wintour Met Gala for the rest of my life.” But his legacy will live on tonight.
We have had our firstAnna Wintourspotting of the evening.
Footage has emerged via a pop culture account on Xof the Vogue editor-in-chief leaving her hotel under the cover of not one but at one stage, by our count, 5 umbrellas. Rain and bobs that impeccable clearly don’t mix.
Hello! Ellie and Morwenna from the Guardian’s fashion desk here in London. We’ll be watching theMet Gala– fashion’s Oscars/Baftas/Olympics – so you don’t have to, guiding you through the probable hits and possible misses from a starry guest list which includesZendaya,Ariana Grande,Rihanna, and multipleJenner/Kardashians.
To recap on what you’re watching: as ever, the Met Gala takes place on the first Monday in May as the opening of New York’s Costume Institute exhibition. There is always a theme, and usually some sort of accompanying text, and this year’s it’s called“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,”which will look back at 300 years of Black fashion alongside the history of Black dandyism.
To get you up to speed, do have a read of thisbrilliant pieceby the Guardian’s Sasha Mistlin from earlier this week. Last month, Sasha interviewed Monica L. Miller, whose 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, interrogates of the strategic use of fashion by Black men throughout history, which is the inspiration behind both the exhibition and gala.
The theme is notable for various reasons, not least because it’s the Met’s first ever fashion exhibition devoted entirely to designers of colour so is being viewed by some as a wider effort to incorporate more diversity into the collection. It’s timely too. Previous galas have been criticised for being tone-deaf, little more than peacocking, and a parade of privilege and elitism.
In herpreview piece for the Saturday paper, Jess Cartner-Morley describes this year’s theme as an “intellectually minded celebration of diversity [which] lands at a moment when the Trump administration is pushing back robustly against both diversity and intellectualism”.
However you view it, the event itself has huge cultural and celebrity cachet, helped no end byAnna Wintourand her assembled co-hosts:Colman Domingo,Lewis Hamilton,ASAP RockyandPharrell WilliamswithLeBron Jamesas the honorary chair.
This is handy given the main thrust of the gala is making money. A choice guest list of designers, celebrities and other notables will have bought tickets or a table at great cost. An individual ticket is $75,000, or over £55,ooo, while a table of ten goes for more than a quarter of a million pounds. Donations also roll in from donors. Proceeds then go to the Costume Institute, which is dependent on the gala for its main operating costs, though it’s worth mention that the gala itself costs a lot of put on too … The gala’s arrival is fleeting: stars arrive, walk up the stairs, and disappear inside. There is a party with dinner and music, more on what that involves later. And there is almost always Rihanna.
Fashion-wise, what does that mean? We can probably expect some radical tailoring, a little menswear-as-womenswear, flamboyant spins on the modern dandy and a diverse raft of designers. But what we want to see is a celebration of fashion at its most multicultural, expressive and absurd. Fashion as high art.
We all know that the red carpet is now an economy unto itself, a strangely cultivated branding exercise for celebrities and marketing tool by the fashion industry built on an illusion that the gowns and dandy suits are an expression of a celebrity’s personal style when in fact, they’ve been picked by a stylist. But that doesn’t stop it being wonderful to watch.