The Fourth Annual Fairyland Met Gala Comment: 2024 Edition

The Garden of TIME goes by so slowly for those who wait…

This is a very special Met Gala comment because it’s my first as a professional writer. This time last year I was pitching my film writing ideas over email to no avail and then pouring all of the resultant frustration into my cutting criticism of Christian Siriano (he deserved it). My writing is sleeker and shinier than it was last May, and I don’t vacillate or qualify quite as much: I attribute this not only to BEING PAID AND EDITED but also to receiving unexpectedly lovely compliments from two controversial luminaries, which clearly went straight to my head. My knowledge of the fashion world is also a bit better because of my catwalk spreadsheet (someone had to have one). 

I’m not doing a traditional praise/roast because I do not think this year delivers in any serious way. The Met’s ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ exhibition (featuring dresses too fragile to be worn) is accompanied by a ‘Garden of Time’ dress code. The allusion is to a 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard. The story takes place among wealthy people in an isolated house-and-garden complex, which is so overdone in its description and its Mozart soundtrack that it brings to mind the Japanese simulacra of the Western baroque and not the original (it’s Ballard, yuanlai ruci). The house is set upon by unwashed hordes: its inhabitants turn them back by plucking crystal ‘time flowers’ from its garden. Eventually the flowers die out and the house is ransacked. The us-against-them irony will probably age well in the larger Met Gala annals (OMG those curators with their curation degrees were exactly like the mythological Cassandra, say people in the future), but it has been diluted in the here-and-now by people pointing it out on social media.  

Ballard’s style is so purple that it often forces his writing into a swollen rhythmic stasis (in March I read The Drowned World because I’m a Madonna fan; I found it nauseating at points. Circulation was cut off). I think all of my primary school teachers were secretly disciples of Ballard - our creative writing lay subject to an adjectival quota, and a lack of adjectives implied a certain creative deficiency. Sometimes they would make adjectives up and put them, with red pen, where they thought they were supposed to be. If you were given the task of dressing someone after a short story then you would probably think of this intensely visual Ballard source as an advantage. Not the case!

(When I was revising for GCSE English Language I was told by my study guide that this exact style and clause structure would get me the top grade. We should reward students for not writing like this. Doesn’t it sound like ChatGPT? It hadn’t been invented in 1962.)

This year, even the ‘best-dressed’ are disappointing. I have enjoyed Law Roach’s novelty approach to dressing Zendaya these past few months (see turf-coloured shift dresses and tennis-ball heels for the Challengers press junket). Now she’s wearing custom Galliano-for-Margiela (blue and turquoise dress with Dutch-oil-painting grape attachment) and vintage Galliano-for-Givenchy (F/W 96 Bardot-Victorian mourning ensemble). My objection to this is that both pieces are by Galliano, which suggests a Galliano-for-the-sake-of-it approach - he’s a cult designer. Wearing anything off a Galliano runway signals a Twitter-friendly openness to the avant-garde supermodel era of the 90s, which seems to be where Roach is trying to place Zendaya (hence, also, costume change with no particular climax). 

Zendaya in Look 2 with stylist Law Roach

But he’s a cult designer for a reason. He comes from the theatre. No other designer has been as dedicated to ‘recreating’ a completely made-up history as Galliano, and here we stomp all over him by excavating his runway looks from their elaborate homes. Roach has patronised us with his addition of a colourful Alexander McQueen hat to the second ensemble (for how would we understand the ‘Garden of Time’ theme if there were no literal fabric flowers?). A betrayal of the original Givenchy runway, which stuck to a black-and-white theme and looked, with its Greco-Roman column dresses, like a Regency-era game of chess. I’d have kept both looks full Galliano and I’d also have attempted to preserve some thematic links, a) between each dress and/or collection, b) to Zendaya’s life and career. This could have been so good. Won’t somebody please think of the context!!

Lana del Rey in AMQ

Lana generally never makes a sartorial miss, and her Alexander McQueen gauzy tree situation (probably after his 2006 ‘Widows of Culloden’ collection) is beautiful - but it stumbles. Again, the main issue is with context. I am bemused by the decision to call back to something so overwhelmingly and lovingly Scottish. She’s the only original early-10s Tumblr pop girl to have aged into a consistently mature, critically-acclaimed artistic practice, a feat she has achieved by gradually deepening her original inquiry into America and its culture and complications (ie. her new songwriting is melodically very Stars and Stripes Forever/Great American Songbook Americana, and I get the sense that this could not have been achieved without substantial study of the source of her old music, which was face-value torch singer Americana). She has just performed at the single most American event (Coachella) and is about to release her first country album. Where is the American stuff and where is the real Lana? This may have been OK if it were intentional, but it doesn’t seem so. Maybe we somehow arrive at the Scottish Lana junction via my favourite etymological fun fact, ie. we get ‘glamour’ from a Scots witchcraft word and it finds its cognate in ‘grammar’?

Isabelle Huppert wears Balenciaga

My best-dressed of the night is Isabelle Huppert. Perfect Luis Bunuel Exterminating Angel vibe. Subtle and no fake flowers and no notes.  

Post-Ballard revelation, here is the next bonus part of my Annual Met Gala Comment:

Short Stories I Recommend Both for Reading and as Themes for Future Met Galas 

(because I appreciate the literary bent but if I have to read another Ballardian fronted adverbial I will lose it, this isn’t Year 6 SATS)

The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

I love Katherine Mansfield - she wrote short fiction with exceptional economy and I think Courtney Love stole the ‘Violet’ lyrics from her published diary. Also, she was the inspiration for Lawrence’s Gudrun in The Rainbow/Women in Love. The Garden Party is very similar to Ballard’s Garden of Time: a rich Edwardian family reckon, barely, with a local working-class death. This theme is a TRAP and if anyone dresses in fabric flowers or AstroTurf they will be KICKED OUT.

Think: ‘going down the mines,’ canaries, parasols, D.H. Lawrence (thus rainbows, phoenix), white lace, the Ascot costuming in the Audrey Hepburn My Fair Lady, mud, mourning.

This is where you could sort of wear Galliano (most of Dior S/S 98 dates too early, into the 19th c. fin de siecle, but this look works):

---Tennessee Williams (two stories)---

I think every aspiring writer should read the complete 50 collected short stories of Tennessee Williams (tangent!) and this is why:

• You will learn writerly discipline - Williams lived a drunk disastrous life, but wrote regularly in the mornings, and ended up with enough to fill a huge compendium. 

• You will learn not to set your heart on a single realisation of a single project - you may recognise single characters and threads from famous plays which eventually became films. Wonderful things grew in Williams’ stories but they didn’t always end up there. If you have one idea then you will have more. Mess around. Turn your story into a screenplay and then write it back again. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

• They are masterclasses in style, dialogue, scope and characterisation!!! 

I couldn’t bring myself to pick one story so I picked two that didn’t seem too obvious…  

The Knightly Quest

I have talked about this novella before on my blog, and it was also a major point of reference for my 2022 verse novel, Vox Literata. It’s unusual for Williams because it breaks from the Southern Gothic and merges into a sort of medieval sci-fi that sort of predicts Blade Runner/Electric Sheep, ie there is a noir-esque interrogation and an escape on a spaceship. The underlying gay politics would work a charm at the Met Gala: they would a) probably appeal to someone with a degree in curation, b) probably encourage some aspect of the Wildean to emerge in a sartorial sense. 

Think: 60s Tudor revival, Thierry Mugler, suits of armour, stained glass.

Happy August the Tenth

A late-period short story about two middle-aged female roommates and their battle of wits. I find it heartwarming because I am an enmity enthusiast. The two luminaries who are nicest about my writing belong to this tradition and famously faxed each other a series of rude messages in 1993 (I LOVE THIS, of course). My August Tenth Met Gala would be a celebration of adversaries.

I would wear Bette Davis’ preserved dress from the minor hagsploitation classic Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte…

Genesis and Catastrophe by Roald Dahl

You should really read this story because it’s all in the punchline. Then come back and read my theme suggestion.

…

How about a Met Gala themed after the famous hypothetical of going back in time and (possibly) murdering baby Hitler? The concept is specific but the associations are broad and visual. Think: 1880s mourning garb, Moses on the red river, 1940s ration tailoring, Garbo and Dietrich both hatching secret unrealised plans to murder the dictator (true story), Hemingway’s unworn baby shoes, Meryl Streep’s white dress, the bit of fabric from Hitler’s suicide sofa that someone bought on LiveAuctioneers. This one is very sensitive and I am descended from German Jews so I would use it to set up celebs I didn’t like. If anyone did it tastelessly it would be ON THEM. 

PS

• I’ve got one relatively straightforward language exam at the end of the month and then I’m done with my degree. I’m using the extra time post-dissertation to read (should be reading in Chinese but instead I’m reading really gossipy political memoirs, in English). And I am learning to sew! 

• I will DEFINITELY do more fashion writing on this blog (so fun and interdisciplinary and not enough of it that I like at present). Need to figure out format (integrating music and book roundups etc.) so may be A/B testing. As always, this is my fun intuitive experimental writer’s sandpit - I’m responding to the things that excite me rather than trying for engagement (getting ready to enter Pyth 5 in late August). Still, if you enjoy any of it then thank you!!!

• I am (almost) definitely writing a weekly Substack post on this blog, and a fortnightly Substack post on Huiyyi, which is my new outlet for English-language research and writing on the Putonghua pop culture of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, 1950-1979 (designed to keep up my Mandarin immersion post-graduation). I will keep up this routine until I manage to find a proper full-time job. Then I will rejig.  

• In my weekly Substack post I am considering doing my own not-entirely-topical version of the Cut’s Approval Matrix, because I think the things they approve of are sometimes a bit cracked. Bikini Kill frontwoman’s memoir both ‘brilliant’ and ‘highbrow’? Come on. 

• I have collected lots of free syllabi and am considering just structuring future nonfiction reading like a second undergrad degree, with reading assignments every week and essays at the end. Not sure why this is so exciting - I am most likely never going back to university in real life (and I think the best part of university is the slightly dodgy Maedchen in Uniform-esque thing where you feel understood and cared about by someone who knows more than you - this happened to me approximately twice during a four-year degree). If I do this, I’ll blog my way through the process (loud advocate for autodidacticism)