It’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.
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