This is about the following, without mysteries. If Anna Wintour, the great fashion guru, invites you to the Met Gala – the mother of all galas – and you go unnoticed, that is a total failure.
Going elegant or not is the least important when walking down the red carpet of Fifth Avenue in the event described as "the Oscars of the East Coast." You have to attract attention either with “curious” dresses or suits or with little fabric and length.
For something the party is described as a display of extravagance. One of the examples that best sums up the spirit of talking is represented by the influencer and businesswoman Kim Kardashian. In last year's edition, she managed to attract the spotlight and hundreds of articles after getting into the mythical dress worn by the legendary Marilyn Monroe in 1962, in New York, when she sang Happy Birthday to President John Kenndy. she.
Kardashian will repeat and will be able to compete with her friend Paris Hilton, who makes a late debut, despite her notorious eccentricities, accepted perhaps because of the close relationship she had with the designer Kark Lagerfeld, born in Germany and who died in February 2019, at the age of 85 years old, to whom the exhibition of the Fashion Institute of the Metropolitan Museum is dedicated, the excuse to organize the soiree that is always held on the first Monday of May.
All this show, a "bonfire of the vanities", as critics say, has been run since 1999 by the powerful Wintour, editor of Vogue magazine and global director of the Condé Nast group. In the book Anna: the biography, published in 2022 by the journalist Amy Odell, the iron fist with which she controls aspects of the gala is underlined, especially the guest list. You can have money (minimum ticket of $50,000), but if he says no, it's no. The gala serves to raise funds for the Institute. In the last one, 17.4 million were collected.
“In a night of excess and display, the gala is where Wintour flaunts her dominance over an industry that is founded on the understanding that there is an inside and an outside,” Odell writes.
“Some are always outside”, insists the author, although there are evolutions. Going back to Kardashian, she was an eternal outsider until the top boss lifted her veto.
It is evident that in its decades of control, the gala has increasingly become a celebrity carnival and, in turn, enjoys a greater impact and popular following, in parallel to the expansion of social networks.
In this edition, Penélope Cruz will be inside, who acts as one of the co-presidents together with Wintour herself, Michaela Coel, Dua Lipa and the retired tennis player Roger Federer, highly appreciated in the US.
The slogan for those attending the party is to dress or undress "in honor of Karl", one of the great masters.
The game issue due to the condition of Lagerfeld, a futurist designer -he believed in the German saying "without credit in the past"- and also with very controversial opinions, a homosexual who angered many by declaring himself against gay marriages, adoptions by same-sex couples, or for his attacks against obese people – they accused him of advocating for anorexia – or the movement
His image, adopted at the end of the eighties, with white hair, black glasses and 19th century-inspired necklaces, will mark the New York evening.
The heart of the matter is an exhibition that pays tribute to the long decades of mastery of this prolific designer who directed several relevant firms such as Chanel, Fendi, Chloé and his own.
It is entitled Karl Lagerfeld, a line of beauty and presents 150 dresses, many of them with the sketches he made to show the exclusive methodology of his work and its evolution from two to three dimensions, according to the organizer, Andrew Bolton. The framework of the exhibition is The analysis of the beauty, William Hogarth's book on the theory that the serpentine line means life and movement and the straight line is inactivity. Lagerfeld, Bolton says, was equally inspired by both.
And the award for extravagance goes to...?
