Met Gala: These Are The Looks That Put The Extra In Extravagant

The first Monday in May has just arrived together with one mission, and one mission only: to please Miss Anna Wintour’s wishes. Celebrated as the woman who has shaped fashion, media, and pop culture for the last three decades, the commands and wishes of Vogue’s editor in chief are challenging, not to say miracle-making. Supermodels, technology, and the Catholic Church are just some of the many themes that inspire Wintour’s challenge to designers, who are tasked to create the most amazing and daring attires. This year’s inspiration, however, has got to be the toughest in the entire history of the Met Gala: “Camp: Notes on Fashion”, an essay by Susan Sontag.

Susan Sontag’s essay talks about one of the late sixties style which embraced audacious and disruptive looks that didn’t actually intend to do so. Old movies from the twenties with girls covered in feathers, the postwar luxurious looks of dancers with lots of sequins, the drag scene of the New York balls in the late and mid-seventies are just some of the references we can see at this year’s Met Gala. Camp is a way of seeing the world, of being subversively authentic without trying to do so. That’s why this year’s Met Gala has been more campy than camp, because, by imitation and intentional extravagance, some of these designers and celebrities went right against its essence by being naturally artificial. Kudos to Billy Porter, though, the one and only celebrity who was genuinely Camp.