a lot of people talking about how they are dissapointed by lazy designers and dresses, which are not in the theme of the evening. but did you really await it? i don´t... for me, MET is first of all business event, like everything in what is Anna Wintour involved... labels and designers need to sell their own pieces... and only btw.. they had a opportunity for this use a great event like that
I agree. Sure the theme of the show the event is for is McQueen, but the event itself is a thousands of dollars a head gala with a ton of press attention. All the top designers go and they in turn have starlets and models to accompany them and wear their designs. Of course they are going to want them to wear current season looks, because that is what they want the potential buyer to wear. Even the McQueen looks were mostly current season because that is what the PR of the house are going to lend out. The archival pieces are not going to encourage sales of the current looks.
Most of the older McQueen looks are probably from personal collections and not the house archives anyway (Hamish Bowles in his tartan look, for instance, is a huge collector of designer pieces)
I was anticipating this event and yes I was disappointed, perhaps that was foolish on my part because I was also disappointed last year and admittedly I am coming to the point where it will be "shame on me" to eagerly anticipate this event with part of the anticipation being the expectation of seeing exciting fashion. Now I will still follow it and comment on it, including about my disappointment, but my emotional investment has diminished.
Yes this is a business event, they are all business events, but I do not think that that means that you cannot custom design pieces or pull from the archives, people have made splashes before on the red carpet in custom or vintage ensembles, in the end it is about exposure. If the "right" way is to expose the designers' current offerings, then they should go all the way and dress the models and celebs in what they sell at Saks. So in my book it was lazy for the designers, particularly the ones who had multiple guests, to not create, style or select something that reflected the theme, now it is their prerogative to be lazy, but it is lazy nonetheless and I think that it is perfectly fair for people to express their disappointment about it. Also rightly or wrongly, one of the reasons that I get disappointed is because the CFDAs are around the corner, and to me that is the event to be more prosaic.
I will note this though, this was just one of a series of events / projects that the Costume Institute sponsored to recognize Alexander McQueen, there was an exhibit, lectures, a book and the gala, and even though the gala was underwhelming, I think that the overall Savage Beauty project appropriately honored McQueen.
