Finding meaning in the Met Ball

I’ve been trying to write about Monday night’s Met Gala all week. I wanted to unpick what this year’s event had meant in terms of signals and messaging - but I kept getting stuck.?

It turns out Amelia Abraham’s piece for the Guardian gave me my reason: aside from Riz Ahmed, Hilary Clinton and Sarah Jessica Parker’s ensembles, it felt like there was actually very little messaging in most of the attendee’s looks.?

Something that is often forgotten about the Costume Institute Gala as it was once known, is that it’s still a fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It’s delivered by the Costume wing of the museum. This helps support and maintain an internationally important collection of clothing from history.?

Somewhere along the way, with the change of name perhaps, the event’s meaning shifted. It’s now a platform for statements about celebrity, fashion, communities and politics.

Above; Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in custom Brother Vellies (which is a sustainable black brand) at the September 2021 Met Ball.

No surprise then, that along with the memes, theres a dialogue which appears on twitter and in column inches every year - a voice which asks if we value the Met Ball so highly, what does that value represent? The dialogue has shifted in the sense that the event seems increasingly detached from the world that most of us live in.

It’s a difficult line for the Met to pick up. Their collection is full of centuries old clothing of the elite, rich, and powerful because those are the items that were deemed valuable by the specific group of wealthy, Western focused individuals who built the Museum in 1872.?

Now, how we value what ‘commoners’ wear has remained relatively unchanged for millenia. It is only in the last 70-80 years that the balance between entrenched power and a country’s subjects has shifted. Worth, power and the coding of it is embedded in working clothes and fashion for the masses like it has never been before.?

Every May, the Met uses a theme related to the exhibition and asks attendees to reference that and specific artworks within the exhibit. To present a theme for the rich and famous and the design houses they represent to emulate from this collection will inevitably create a loop. It forces us to reflect on the continuing dividers in wealth, race and class that have existed for thousands of years, and with the largest transfer of wealth from the masses to the 1% in living history occurring infront of our eyes, especially prescient.?

In terms of coding, for which I mean those outside of the Costume industry, understanding and reading of pre 1900 costume is narrowly signalled. We find meaning by signals of silhouette, fabric choice and embellishment.

We’ve learned this language from films, books and artwork but increasingly we have adapted this coding into short form media. As an example, Instagram is now twelve years old, and its impact on our ability - and demand - to absorb image meanings at lightning speed is undeniable.?

We’ve been taught to read clothing from centuries past in specific, quick ways: a corset frothing with lace, a big skirt. A fan in hand. Are you thinking Victorian fashion? That’s because what you think of as that period, is high society clothing. So on a surface level, attendee outfits should be attempting to send a clear and simple signal, with the small historical framing toolbox we all share.?

2018’s Ball was a particular high point in this respect. At “Heavenly Bodies : Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” designs reflected elements with clear signalling. Using decorative elements from the height of Central European Rennaissance era religious art; dresses that reflected church adornments, religious clothing and famous Catholic figures from history. This shorthand is relatively easy to understand. Pearls, rubies, red velvet, white ermine and gold rope. As viewers, we enjoyed the event because the coding was succint and understandable to us.

Above, Participants from the 2018 Met Ball.

So perhaps the problem this year, was that the messages were harder to immediately decipher. I think its good to note that unlike the previous centuries in Western culture, the 19th Century saw huge shifts within in a relatively small period of time.?

The Gilded Age of this years theme, represents what sounds like a short thirty five years of American fashion. But actual silhouettes from the early 1870s through to the 1910’s were schizophenic. Women’s wear in 1870 began with swelling skirts that then deflated, bustles that appeared behind and dissapeared. Then they re-appeared. After, both bust and hips expanded dramatically only for androgeny to start its bloom as the 20th century hit double digits.?

Perhaps it is impossible to write anything about the Met Ball without some kind of best dressed list. Instead, here is a pause for thought: the silhouettes that attempted to code our basic understanding of those 35 years in a glance; referencing dresses within the museum, famous paintings or art styles. They really do reveal the breadth of style within that time period.?

The other problem with this year’s event was that the request to emulate America’s golden era of prosperity, it instead highlighted the lack of message that delivers for today. Post MeToo, BLM and Pandemic, we expect wider cultural reference points across religious and continental guides. Those messages simply were not there. A lot of attendees have very little control over this messaging; they are brand ambassadors for large fashion houses. Whoever has the voice, still chose to look away at a moment when messages mean everything.?

One last word on the Met Ball. I’ve noticed how angry the costume world specifically is with Kim Kardashian for wearing Marilyn Monroe’s nude dress. Fellow costumers have taken to social media all week because for them, immediately they read a number of different messages to most.?

First of all, the ‘nude dress’ as it is known, was requested by Marilyn so that she would appear completely nude. The dress is made of seemingly floating diamantes sewn onto layers of pale caucasion toned 'silk souffle'; a vintage fabric that is no longer made due to being incredibly flammable. The original meaning Marilyn intended has been lost.?

The other most noted complaint was that the dress was not made during the Gilded age, but 50 or so years later and therefore represents a completely different cultural time and space.?

Let’s talk about context. Marilyn wanted the nude dress to sing Happy Birthday to JFK. While she was rumoured to be in a secret relationship with the then President. The level of power and import Marilyn expressed in that moment, is entrenched in Western Culture.

The signal to many is that the dress now represents a vital moment; in which Marilyn realised a level of sexual independance and liberation. In being like another skin, the nude dress made of Monroe a new symbol. A simple message; a being of ultimate confident sexuality. The dress was part of her, and in wearing it she gave it it’s meaning.?

And yet, during the Gilded Age, women as sexual beings with open public agency was inconcievable. Women at that point in time, could not even vote.?

This is of course ignoring the other more obvious point that many have made - that because of this value of meaning, the dress itself has significant cultural value and should be kept in a museum. Old fabrics become brittle with age, none more so than silk. That this is also an irreplaceable item due to the banning of silk soufflé only doubles down on its value. Oils from our skin and bacteria eat away at it further, and this fragile 60 year old dress is no different. Surely any wearing of it, even for 20 minutes alone, would damage it irrevocably.?

Designers spend 6 months and more preparing the Met Gala ensembles. But with the shifting of cultural and political sands, it must be hard to stay on message that entire time. Coding undeniably shifts, redefined constantly by who the storyteller or reader is. And because of this, there will almost always be unintended signals. Therin the presumed message from Kardashian in Marilyns dress was “I’m just like her”. Instead many, at least from the anecdotal criticism I’ve witnessed, the message is far more like “I have the money to do whatever I want.”?

Ironic then, that this is perhaps as close to gilded age messaging as you can get. As the ‘gild’ of importance and value desbribed by Mark Twain in coining the expression, was something you could remove if only you scratched away the shining surface.?