Year after year on the very first Monday in May, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts the Costume Institute Gala popularly known as the Met Gala to kick off the opening of its popular fashion exhibit at The Costume Institute. The well-coveted event’s dress code always honors the exhibits theme. Whether paying homage to a designer like Alexander McQueen in 2011’s “Savage Beauty”, or wider themes like 2018’s “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” most stars follow the dress code very seriously on the red carpet, and this year we expect it to be no different.
The theme of this years Met Gala is, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” which, no, isn’t referring to the outdoor activity that involves pitching a tent and sleeping bags, but rather a nod to a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag, Notes on “Camp” which begins by defining the term as “its love of the unnatural, of artifice and exaggeration.” Noting that with camp, it’s not about talking in “terms of beauty” but rather “in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.”
In the essay Sontag breaks down the sensibility of camp in 58 bullet points and begins by explaining that not everything can be camp, but many things, ideas and objects can be considered “campy.” She noted that songs, movies, buildings, furniture, novels, people and, of course, clothes, can all showcase camp. In fact, Sontag gives her own examples of “campy” things which included Tiffany lamps, Swan Lake, King Kong and Flash Gordon comics.
The curator of the institute, Andrew Bolton told the New York Times about his choice
“Whether it’s pop camp, queer camp, high camp or political camp — Trump is a very camp figure — I think it’s very timely,” He said. “Much of high camp is a reaction to something.”
Another reason this is a fitting theme for the night is that designers are embracing camp in collections and runway shows now more than ever before.
Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele, who’s serving as a co-chair at this year’s gala, has been noticed to regularly embraces camp themes whether it’s with his gender-bending suits (beloved by Cate Blanchett and Harry Styles) or exaggerated theatrics at his shows.
Another main component of camp is its preference to “seeing everything in quotation marks.” And one designer who embraces that concept is Louis Vuitton and Off White’s creative Director, Virgil Abloh, who has been placing quotation marks on pieces throughout his Off-White line the last few seasons.
According to Sontag, “the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mix of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”
She explains that when something is bad, not camp, it was “too mediocre in its ambition.”
So which stars are likely to embrace the over-the-top exuberance of camp? We have our best guesses but lets wait and see.
The show will have about 175 pieces from men’s and women’s wear, to sculpture, paintings and drawings and presented designers will include Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga and Moschino.
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