Met Gala’s fashion as art, the good and the bad

In a nod to complaints of Amazon workers who have to skip bathroom breaks and urinate in bottles instead, a guerrilla activist group placed close to 330 bottles with fake urine inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the gala’s venue. Progressive protesters have found the perfect target in Bezos who has political right leanings, a $250 billion bankroll and a record of anti-union efforts, not to mention that the Bezos couple brazenly flaunt their luxe life including a $50 million wedding in Venice last summer with a $500 million yacht on standby.

This comes at a time when the gala’s future is uncertain since there is a transition of professional roles for longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour who has been the lead chairperson since 1995, controlling everything from who should be invited to seating charts and choice of menu. Wintour has stepped aside as editor but remains as chief content officer of Condé Naste, Vogue’s parent company and global editorial director of Vogue. As the world’s most famous fashion editor, she transformed the gala into a global phenomenon, attracting star-studded A-listers and generating a healthy revenue stream for Condé Nast, aside from raising money for the Met’s Costume Institute, reaching a record $42 million this year.

The Met Gala misses

The Met Gala is no doubt one of the most anticipated on the social calendar, a most exclusive party to witness a spectacle of fashion and extravagance, with a top-secret list of invitees who have seats at the dinner table for $100,000 each. The red carpet is also one of the most watched by all media, with designers, jewelers, stylists and agents all preparing months in advance.

Ultimately, despite the protests, nothing could stop the gala and it was as lavish as ever. The theme of the evening was “Fashion as Art,” tied to the blockbuster exhibition of the Costume Institute, “Costume Art,” which the curator, Andrew Bolton, conceptualized based on the premise that fashion or the “dressed body” is the common thread connecting every other gallery in the museum. Of course, if there are dressed bodies, there are also undressed bodies, making nude dressing one of the main trends on the red carpet, aside from art inspirations, painterly treatments and anatomical manipulations. With such a wide range of influences to choose from, a lot of experimentation was done, as expected, with varying results. Here are some of the glaring hits and misses that make the gala highly entertaining as always.