The Harder They Come, The Harder They Karl

The 3rd Annual Fairyland Met Gala Roundup

Welcome to my third (!) Met Gala roundup! Some relevant-ish thoughts about fashion:

• We’ve revived Y2K - but when are we going to revive the mid-2000s wave of diaphanous 1920s-boho fashion, almost entirely orchestrated by Rachel Zoe? (I found a few episodes of her reality show on Vimeo and all of it unironically still looks great. We’ve been lionising the wrong 00s fashion personalities!)

• I was delayed in the Hong Kong airport last week, and after spending hours and hours in duty-free, I’ve decided that every luxury brand should embrace artificial scarcity and entirely ditch RTW collections. Imagine how much cooler Viard’s yawn-inducing Chanel would be if she exclusively did made-to-measure couture, and, like, collectible keyrings? Then designers would be forced to pull out the big guns for events like this - it would be their main form of advertising.

• There are lots of thinkpieces out right now about how quote-unquote-problematic Karl Lagerfeld was and how questionable it is to use him as a Met Gala theme, but I’m honestly not sure what sort of politics people expect from the high fashion sphere, in which success is usually based on being either provocative or ‘timeless’. You won’t get fashion points either way for using clothes to reiterate the political status quo, because said status quo is a) boring, b) fickle. I don’t think any groundbreaking creative has ever been ‘unproblematic’. 

As always, if I haven’t mentioned it - I think it’s boring. 

The worst

Gigi Hadid wears Givenchy

Gigi Hadid wore virtually the same outfit that her sister wore in 2022 - the one I called ‘authentically 1890s’ and compared to a Victorian cartoon! This is like something out of All About Eve or Persona or 3 Women, but even more exciting because it’s about supermodels. Also, I suspect the outfit itself is a play on one of the early-90s tulle-ridden Chanel runways, but it’s far too busy to read legibly. It was Coco Chanel herself who said you should take at least one thing off before you leave the house. Either lose the gloves or the orchid (? bemusing detail) or the gap below the corset or the necklace or the pattern on the tulle…  

Amy Fine Collins wears Thom Browne

I’ve changed my mind. In some cases, it is actually a better decision to attend the Met Gala without dressing to theme. Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances, like terminal lack of judgement on seemingly anything at all. 

Karen Elson wears Christian Siriano

It’s a desperate attempt at manufacturing *a moment*, and it looks dated even though it’s only fake flowers and a transparent dress. The nudity is taken far enough to look tacky, but not far enough to be interestingly risque. It’s pretty much a Project Runway recycled materials challenge. Obviously Siriano was an actual winner of Project Runway, so fair play to him for finding his niche - but there’s not enough construction going on for it to be giving Lagerfeld or any brand he worked for, ever. It would be a good dress for a carnivalesque Pierrot-Fellini Met Gala if the statement-less train was chopped off. 

Olivia Wilde and Margaret Zhang wear the same Chloe dress

What!!?? I need to know more! Which stylist set them up? Are all the celeb stylists in a big Slack channel together so they can plot the gradual demise of every famous woman? Is this a really elaborate way of outing an affair (I will steal that for a screenplay even if it isn’t)? Or did they both happen to buy the same dress off the rack, get alterations done independently, and not tell anyone that it was for the Met Gala, so no alarms were raised? I’ve put this in ‘worst’ because imagine paying 50 grand to attend an event where the entire media have gathered to scrutinise your dress, and then seeing someone else turn up in the same dress as you - I think Zhang wore it better though.

The best

Salma Hayek wears Gucci

I initially thought it was odd to attend the Karl Lagerfeld tribute Met Gala only to wear a label that Karl Lagerfeld had nothing to do with, but I LOVE this dress. It is a little bit Chanel Spring 1992, a little bit Gone With the Wind, and 75% ‘Fassbinder heroine nightclub entertainer exiting tumultuous marriage’. The skirt is from the poppy ‘80s, the bustier is from the grimy early ‘90s by way of the fin-de-siecle - we’re getting historical narrative! It’s like the Blond Ambition of dresses!

Rachel Brosnahan wears Sergio Hudson

This is like the genius antidote to Christian Siriano’s ‘worst’ entry. I love nude red carpet outfits when they’re done well, because it’s an extremely haughty way of asserting your celebrity: you couldn’t wear anything like this at a ‘normal person’ event, eg. a work Christmas do. Here, a contrast between sharp tailoring and actual nudity is the perfect allusion to Lagerfeld’s Chanel, where two-piece suits started to get risque. 

Karlie Kloss wears Loewe

My very bored objection to a lot of (TBH, most of) the other Met Gala looks was that they looked like cosplay. Like - seeing someone *cosplay* high fashion by remaking it with spray paint and cardboard, instead of actually wearing high fashion themselves. I don’t think the Met Gala is literally supposed to be a fancy-dress party - it’s themed black-tie, which is something else entirely. I like Kloss’s outfit because it manages to allude to early Chanel while retaining a central couture element in its own right. The printed detail (glow? wear? lack of sun exposure?) is very clever, and means that her jewellery does not look shoehorned in. 

Margaret Qualley wears Chanel

In a Young Hollywood full to the brim with nepo babies, it’s important to 100% own your nepo-ness. It has to be part of the larger narrative. It’s essential that you support the predestination of this narrative with every single personal choice you make. You were made to be a star! It’s literally in your blood! Flaunt it! I love this ingenue ensemble because it makes Qualley look like the spoiled teenage daughter of an oil baron, who will one day inherit everything. I imagine all of this happening in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass universe - I suppose because it’s readably 60s-does-20s. 

Penelope Cruz wears Chanel

It might be too traditional to really reflect the full extent of Lagerfeld’s Chanel shakeup, but it remains beautiful and well-constructed. The veil makes it - it’s equally Spanish and Old Hollywood, and reminds me of mournful (!) absentee and fashion genius Alexa Demie, who keeps making very intentional red-carpet references to Maria Felix.