More Fizzle Than Sizzle at the Met Gala

I t’s Met Gala time, the first Monday in May, New York’s party of the year, and the good, the bad, and the ugly of high fashion. This year’s theme and dress code — “Tailored for You” — loosely reflect the Costume Institute’s annual blockbuster exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Fashion, which concerns black-dandy fashion. We’re told in Superfine that, around 300 years ago, a new culture of conspicuous consumption, fueled by slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, enabled access to clothes signaling wealth and taste. The black dandy springs from this history. It’s a specious proposition, I think, but I haven’t seen the show, which opens next week. My mind’s open.

Except for 2020 — when the Chinese coronavirus hysteria-induced twilight zone canceled it — the Met Gala has happened year after year since 1948. It has raised more than $300 million to support the museum’s extraordinary department specializing in fashion through the ages. About 15 years ago, the Costume Institute took the Brooklyn Museum’s superb fashion collection, since Brooklyn didn’t have the money to store it. Together the collections comprise 60,000 objects. Andrew Bolton has been the curator in charge of the Costume Institute since 2015, though he was there as a curator for years before that.

Fashion is art, with the body as the canvas and a fascinating intersection of materials, craftsmanship, taste, and marketing. On Monday, I watched the banquet guests — 400 people, dressed to the nines — do the red-carpet parade and then studied still photos of each and every one. In rural Vermont, where I live, fashion is flannel and plaid, best found in Walmart, Family Dollar, and the general store. The Met Gala is a visit to another planet. Monday’s fashion was bracing, bewildering, didactic, and, sad to say, more often than not boring.

Big exhibitions take years to develop. In the case of Superfine, what sounded good in, say, 2020 or 2021 might wither rather than ripen. “Tailored for You,” highlighting black fashion and black guests, seemed to wither and die from constriction. Not that I’m a celebrity hound, but A-listers were few and far between, and the B-, C-, and D-listers seemed to order from the same fashion menu. Most Gala guests chose a black-and-white palette or, worse, all white or all black.

With women, this made for sameness. The actress and model Zendaya and Anna Sawai, the Japanese actress and singer, wore the same white outfit — more or less — and even a superstar like Diana Ross, whose Chevez Clarke–designed, spangled and feathered white gown had a mile long train, seemed “meh.” Too much white, and you look like a bride. It took six men to get her and her dress up the stairs.

I’d never heard of Ashley Graham, Adut Akech, Nicki Minaj, Precious Lee, or Doja Cat, and they may or may not be famous, but their boobs aren’t known to nature. Fashion accenting a curvy figure is one thing, but belaboring it is another. It’s a gala, and it’s at the Met, not a tryout for a chorus line in Vegas. Though Superfine covers centuries, many guests opted for 1920s gangster stripes.

Some gala-goers were just plain weird. Andre 3000, a rapper, sported a mock baby grand piano on his back. Why? He also carried what looked like a black plastic garbage bag. Men carry bags now. I have a man bag I started carrying a few years ago and don’t know how I survived decades without it. Charli XCX crossed the line separating foxy and sadomasochist. The comic actor Cole Escola had a zombie psychedelic look in a bright floral suit with wide pink lapels designed by Christopher John Rogers. Jenna Ortega, an actress known for the Scream franchise, wore a dress made from metal rulers. Aurora James’s gown started with 30 feet of crushed, pleated chiffon with a massive tulle-and-mesh headpiece inspired by Yoruba style. Thebe Magugu designed it. It’s nice enough, but I draw the line at brown dresses for women, who look pale and sickly in them.

Co-chairing the gala was the movie actor, writer, and producer Colman Domingo, whom I’ve seen in Rustin and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He’s talented and I’d call him dapper, too. Lewis Hamilton, the British race car driver, and Pharrell Williams, a rapper and philanthropist, co-chaired, too. I’d never heard of them. Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor, co-chairs also, but she’s the creative genius, doorkeeper, and ultimate rainmaker behind the gala for nearly 30 years. At 75, she’s done her bit and had a fashion flop this time, though this year’s gala, earning $31 million, was its best ever, money-wise. I admire her for her philanthropy but suggest she lead the charge for a couple of years more and then retire.

Also co-chairing was the rapper ASAP Rocky, stylized as A$AP Rocky. I’d never heard of him. He’s an actor and brand endorser, too. I watched his music video B.M.B., which stands for “Be My Bitch.” All rap music sounds more or less the same to me. From Harrisburg via Harlem, he hit the charts in 2012, inspired by artists such as Mobb Deep, Three 6 Mafia, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, whom I don’t know, either. Though he has dated rapper Iggy Azalea and model Chanel Iman, the love of his life, he says, is the singer Rihanna. I’d never heard of them, either. ASAP Rocky was tried and acquitted this past February for assault with a deadly weapon. His trial might have been a fashion shoot. He wore a Saint-Laurent trench coat, a Gucci cashmere coat, glossy, square-toed Vadim derbies for shoes, Tiffany gold earrings, ornamented Ray-Bans, Armani suits, and, during two court sessions, a dinner jacket. He’s repulsive. What defendant wears a dinner jacket to his trial? I know we coddle criminals these days, but do we serve caviar and Champagne in court? Maybe he lives life with the motto, “the Devil made me do it.”

LeBron James was the honorary chairman of the Met Gala. He’s a basketball champion. Though I’ll surely be pelted with garbage, I confess I had never heard of him. At six foot three, I can play basketball, and my parents were fanatical UConn fans, but, really, it’s a girl’s game. Girl’s game or not, LeBron didn’t show.

Since “Tailored for You” is a race-based event held in Manhattan, one person bound to be there was Al Sharpton, and there he was. He’s the king of race pimps. Yes, he looked dapper in a dark-brown tux and a white shirt with pleated sleeves, but he’s Al Sharpton.

Kamala Harris didn’t do the catwalk, but she attended, looking elegant in a black-and-white gown designed by Off-White and with an asymmetrical cape sleeve and a long scarf. I’d never seen her in a dress.

For timeless, subtle elegance, which I like, Ava DuVernay, a movie director, wore a veiled hat and a Prada striped skirt and a white bodice based on a dress her great-grandmother wore in 1917. She was a seamstress in Hollywood. Hey, I’m sentimental. Burberry doesn’t just make raincoats or do checks. Liu Wen, regarded as China’s first supermodel, wore a vibe-jacquard velvet pantsuit in dragon red, a classic color but a modern look. Whitney Peak’s raspberry crepe and mousseline flowed into an asymmetrical buttoned skirt with black sequined tweed and a braided jacket, plus a cool hat. Chanel made it. At the catwalk procession on Monday night, there was lots of fidgeting, teeth-picking, and garment-hoisting among the gala-goers. We don’t see this in the finished photo shoots in Vogue. These three women walked with assurance. I know the clothes were made for them, but they suited their bodies to perfection.

I saw plenty of breath-of-fresh-air style, too. Jeremy O. Harris’s Balmain-designed clothes actually channel Beau Brummell, who can be said to have invented the dandy look. Tracee Ellis Ross, Diana Ross’s daughter, wore a voluminous pink jumpsuit with red accents, a huge red bow tied around her waist, creating quite a backside look, and a fabulous hat, all designed by Marc Jacobs. Monica Barbaro, an actress, wore a black tulle shirt, cream jacket, black gloves, and a jaunty hat, all by Dior, and she looked very French and not at all like a gangster.

Tickets were $75,000 each, but I think designers and fashion houses cover the price of admission, though I imagine that Whoopi Goldberg, the Kardashians, and Diana Ross have some spare cash. The Costume Institute is the only Met department that’s self-supporting. That was the deal when the Met agreed to take over the old Museum of Costumes Art in the late 1940s. Pat Buckley — Mrs. William F. Buckley — chaired the Met Gala from 1978 to 1995 when it was a high-society event, and there was a version of the Four Hundred — originally, the exclusive elite of the Gilded Age — still in the city. The event has gone high-celebrity under Wintour’s rule.