I like fashion, but the pretentious Met Gala grotesquery made me physically repulsed

Igor Ogorodnev
RT

 

Just because “it’s like that on purpose” doesn’t mean that the look-at-me hideousness on display at the Met Gala is above criticism – in fact it arouses an almost visceral rejection. 

I don’t want to think of myself as too narrow-minded to understand the intent behind what is essentially a corporate-sponsored experimental fancy dress party for celebrities. In fact, I would venture that I myself have worn much riskier choices relative to the normal people around me (and I don’t have fawning assistants and fashion editors to validate my every sartorial idiocy).

But, seriously: Jared Leto in a crystal-harness gown holding his own head, corseted actor Ezra Miller with seven eyes on his face, performer Billy Porter carried in on a palanquin by six bare-chested buff men in lame trousers.

Yes, I know that the theme was camp, the justification for all the over-the-top gaudiness.
Yet I did not see any camp. Camp is playful and self-aware. The celebrities did not stand there and poke fun at how silly they looked, they posed with Blue Steel faces on the red carpet in the middle of not a burlesque cabaret, but one of the stuffiest invitation-only charity events in America. Pretension is the enemy of irony, and if there was any camp it was mostly unintentional. So, more like kitsch. Maybe Katy Perry, dressed as a hamburger and a chandelier, got it, though this seems to be just her taste anyway.

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