MET Costume Institute Gala 2021 : In America: A Lexicon of Fashion (Part 1 of 2)

[Lola701]

My two cents on the MET Gala…

I find the comments all around internet on the Met Gala quite interesting and funny…People talk about the decline of exclusivity and stuff…

The Met Gala is not less exclusive today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. That’s part of pop culture.
And let’s be honest. It’s only fair for Youtubers to be Invited at The Met. Derek B is doing his job. He gets those people invited at special events and brands recognize the impact those people have with their platforms..

The MET gala is a big marketing operation for brands. The tables are what? 35000 dollars per individual…So, it has kinda became that insane spectacle where marketing budgets are involved. So, of course we wlll see a ton of European designers or brands represented. There aren’t that many American brands that can afford to pay for those attendees. This year, some designers were encouraged to invite others designers who wouldn’t normally have access to the event. But in a weird way, it kinda kills the « publicity » aspect of the gala and play much more into it « social aspect ».


I actually think that this MET gala was more interesting than the previous…Not because of the fashion but because people somehow remember that it is a social event. The Youtubers are today what rappers were in the 90’s and what Athletes were in the 2000’s. The entertainment industry is becoming larger and the power of influence of fashion is becoming also larger. It opens a new audience to the exhibition, it offers content for Vogue and media outlets and amazing exposure to the brands that managed to dress the right people.

Rihanna’s looks was maybe underwhelming but at Balenciaga they are over the moon right now.

But I think the mess is a bit of a mess for us now because there are so many layers and different promises and expectations. It’s just a fundraiser for the fashion department of a museum and it has turned into this kind of Fashion SuperBowl/ epitome of the excess of capitalism and consumerism/Giant living billboard…etc.
But on a less « serious » note, I can’t be upset about seeing people attend an event i couldn’t even attend…(even in my wildest dreams) lol.

 

[velvetandsilk]

Stories We Missed: The Met Gala’s David Wojnarowicz Problem

Sam Moore looks at how the artist became yet another victim of Costume Institute Benefit’s appropriation problem

BY Sam Moore in Features | 13 DEC 21

‘The Met Gala’s David Wojnarowicz Problem’ is part of a series of short essays on the events and trends we missed in our coverage of art and culture in 2021. Read more – and last year’s stories – here.

Once a year, I want to write about fashion. The annual Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – known informally as the Met Gala or Met Ball – is a big moment in all kinds of calendars: celebrities, designers and queers on Twitter. Inevitably, it produces strong reactions to some strong looks – from the good to the bad, and even the ugly. The 2021 benefit, with its ‘American Independence’ dress code, was no exception: there was the good (Debbie Harry’s hooped ‘flag’ skirt formed from ragged red and white ribbons, a look that right-wing outlets such as the Daily Mail and Fox News reductively branded ‘patriotic’), and the bad (Cara Delevingne’s ludicrous ‘PEG THE PATRIARCHY’ vest), and the ugly (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s commendable but uninteresting ‘TAX THE RICH’ dress). However, there was one look that simultaneously nailed each variable in the good/bad/ugly triptych: Dan Levy’s elaborate, puffy-sleeved and polo-necked celestial/cartographic jumpsuit, which was ‘inspired’ by David Wojnarowicz.

When an artist whose work you love gets misused on the red carpet, there’s a temptation to get territorial over their work and become a bit of a purist about it. To purse your lips, squint in judgement, and say, ‘I knew their work before this.’ It isn’t only a matter of ‘getting the reference’ but the problems that arise from how the reference is used. And that’s the root of the issue with Levy’s Loewe-designed outfit for the 2021 event. It wasn’t so much that it repurposed Wojnarowicz’s work, but more that as an act of adaptation it both maimed and fundamentally misunderstood it – turning references to the experience of living with AIDS, and the legacy of a major figure in the history of AIDS activism/art, into a fashion accessory.

Cara Delevingne arrives for the 2021 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Angela Weiss / AFP)

The centrepiece of the garment derives from Wojnarowicz’s 1984 collage f*ck You ****** f*cker. Loewe repurposed the image at the heart of the work – two men cut from a map of North America, kissing – and placed it across Levy's chest. This panel kept some of the central background of the original image (something between a luminescent ocean and a starry night) but the other map fragments and photographs of Wojnarowicz and his friends (taken in abandoned buildings around New York's piers) that were set around its edges, and which were vital in defining a context of degradation and alienation for the central motif, were removed. Loewe rendered Wojnarowicz’s work politically toothless. There is, of course, room for queer-inspired Met Gala looks that gesture more in the direction of love and memorialization. Nikki de Jager’s 2021 tribute to Marsha P. Johnson (a pioneering trans activist)– including a crown of flowers and ‘PAY IT NO MIND’ sash – captured the ways we can use referential garments to engage in a dialogue with the past. But Levy's Wojnarowicz look extracted only the parts that most easily fit with mainstream narratives of LGBT+ acceptance. Alone, the central kiss of ****** f*cker felt more like a vague echo of the popular visual slogan ‘Love is Love’ than a piece of political art. But the power of Wojnarowicz's 1980s original comes from the fact that it understood – in an era defined by homophobic violence – the inherent danger in one man expressing desire for another.

Daniel Levy arrives for the 2021 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Angela Weiss / AFP)
Levy’s look captured something messy about the relationship between historical queer art and mainstream acceptance: the idea that, for the life and work of radical queer artists to be accepted, it needs to be palatable to a straight audience. A reproduction of another Wojnarowicz, from 1990–91, Untitled (One Day This Kid…) – emblazoned Levy's clutch bag. In New York in 2018, members of the AIDS activist organization ACT UP protested at the Whitney Museum against the inclusion of this collage in a Wojnarowicz retrospective (‘History Keeps Me Awake at Night’), arguing that presenting the work without explaining the ongoing nature of the AIDS crisis dangerously historicized the issue, making it appear over. In many ways, it’s fitting that Untitled features lines such as ‘One day, families will give false information to their children and each child will pass that information down generationally to their families and that information will be designed to make existence intolerable for this kid.’ Transferred to a designer clutch, the work doesn’t historicize AIDS and the shadow it casts – it simply ignores it.

Nikkie de Jager arrives for the 2021 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Angela Weiss / AFP)
The idea of teaching has been vital to so many aspects of queer culture. Yet, there is an ongoing tension between the past and present because so many queer lives have been systemically erased and silenced. To see Wojnarowicz’s art appear on the steps of the Met Museum, itself a perpetrator of this kind of cultural erasure, is ugly at best. Jonathan Anderson, Loewe’s creative director, described his brief for Levy's outfit as being to create ‘the kind of thing a “gay superhero” might wear’. But Wojnarowicz wasn’t a superhero. At no point in Untitled (One Day This Kid…) does he offer a utopian escape route out of his lived political reality. So to see his work defanged and repurposed as a form of accessory feels – ironically, given the words appear nowhere on a garment inspired by ****** f*cking – like witnessing a short-sighted and ahistoric f*ck You.

Main image: Daniel Levy arrives for the 2021 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Angela Weiss / AFP)

Stories We Missed: The Met Gala’s David Wojnarowicz Problem