What I Would Have Worn to the Met Gala

The Met Gala is an annual fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Typically, designers, models, and celebrities gather in over-the-top themed looks to celebrate a new exhibit from the Met’s Costume Institute. Past themes have included religion, camp, and punk. While the themes are usually fairly broad, it is expected that attendee’s dress in related avant-garde looks, often with the designer of their costume as their date for the night.

This year’s Met Gala, themed “In America: A Lexicon of Style”, marked the return of the event after almost 2 years. Because of Covid, last year’s event was cancelled, and this year’s event was postponed so that it fell months after its usual early-May date to Monday, September 13, on the tail end of New York Fashion Week. Organizers opted to keep the event more intimate, requiring masks (except on the red carpet and during dinner) as well as proof of vaccination.

The Costume Institute will debut a two-part exhibit. Part one, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion”, will open on September 18 at the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Met, and will also mark the Costume Institute’s 75th anniversary. Part one of the exhibit will include pieces from Christopher John Rogers, Sterling Ruby, Prabal Gurung, Conner Ives, and Andre Walker.

Part two, “An Anthology of Fashion”, will open May 2, 2022 in the period rooms of the museum’s American Wing, and will be accompanied by the regularly scheduled Met Gala. Curators will work with American film directors to create cinematic vignettes of different historical times in American fashion.

After a year and a half of turbulent times across the country, the Costume Institute wanted to highlight American designers’ thoughtful responses to the recent political and social justice movements. The invitation’s dress code was listed as “American Independence” and attendees and designers were free to interpret that as they saw fit.

My Favorites:

While I loved so many of the looks on this year’s carpet, I feel like stylists and designers take more and more liberty every year to stray further from the event’s theme. Some took the theme too literally, some were such a reach that they required excessive googling to understand, and some just looked like they were heading to Applebee’s before their small-town high school prom. After a long and grueling fashion week, it’s understandable that everyone was tired and run down, with nothing left to give a gratuitous event like the Met Gala. Personally, I was hoping to see more small-time American designers and vintage reincarnations, but most celebrities are contracted with European luxury brands, many of which aptly created their interpretations of American cliches (aka denim). Still, it feels like there were so many missed opportunities for great fashion. Maybe we will see more vintage at next' year’s Met part 2 with a more historical leaning theme.