I was appalled! That Met Gala Red Carpet was a disgrace! I keep telling myself I should be more diplomatic and accept more as the years go by. Instead I get increasingly more nervous and annoyed by the new perspective on fashion and style via celebrity! I’ll tell you more about it!
So the new Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute Exhibition this year (from May 6 through August 14) is about Fashion in the Age of Technology. Suggestively titled ‘ManusxMachina’, the exhibition could actually surprise you, as aptly presented by its curator, Andrew Bolton ‘I think people are expecting the exhibition to be about robots, and it really isn’t about that at all. It’s about rather subtle hidden technologies.’
I’m convinced everyone who wanted to participate at the Benefit Gala got a sense of what the exhibition was about. Or not? Looking at them, one would be tempted to assume they didn’t read the invite or completely ignored the theme in-depth only to give it their most shallow interpretation. Silver, shiny silver, robot-inspired looks… where art thou, fashion?
Where is the original flow, the individual expression, the artistic take on a given theme? I’m sorry it has come to this and fashion is living a sad moment in the age of technology. The age of fast-delivered fashion, immediate-reproduction, shallow-interpretation, aesthetic values based on reality tv and selfies, highly staged décor, intensely modified photographs and bodies.
And what saddens me above all is to see Vogue declare best-dressed of the night a couple which is the very sum of our days fashion-wrongs. Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West. Appalling yet so true! I have the utmost respect for Anna Wintour and her tremendous work at Vogue. She always had a knack for the new, upcoming best-selling issue in fashion. Since she embraced the Kardashian-West coupling, I learned to accept and live with a displeasing reality: fashion is butt-conditioned and like-oriented, self-entitled, egotistic culture today.
This is what spawned the very sad, disappointing Met Gala 2016 Red Carpet. Our culture. Our fast-oriented culture. I respect Anna’s choices – yet, do don’t see her going above and beyond, right? Last I checked, she was still wearing Chanel for the occasion… Think what you like, my opinion about Anna is that she knows what the audience wants and she’s mercilessly feeding it to them. It’s her work. And I respect her for doing it well.
Now as for those who respected the theme and went for an original look I’m giving standing ovations to Solange. Her outfit was so perfectly chosen, so unlike all others, she had me at ‘hello!’ (just like Zoe Saldana did, but that’s no surprise to those who know me well -_^). Of course my taste conditioned my praise, yet there was so much to dress from as the ManusxMachina thingie allowed a ton of creative freedom (from pleats to embroideries, from empowering fashion as a métier of art to appliqués and sophisticated fabrics).
A lot of freedom yet highly misunderstood and underused. Sarah Jessica Parker, like Madonna, had to go out and defend their respective choice of outfits for they were called out as exaggerated or not in tune with the theme. I supposed many would have raised eyebrows if it weren’t for the shallow culture dominating the fashion industry (as all other industries). I’ll leave you with a couple of examples from the dance photo booth as the images will speak of the ridiculous and the shallow all by themselves. Have a beautiful Costume Institute Exhibition, people! Don’t forget fashion and don’t let yourself be forgotten in technology!
1 comment so far
I couldn’t have said any better. I also chose Solange as one of the best in show. If there was ever a perfect example of the iteration between hand and machine that is the pleating device. It is a beautiful, almost mesmerizing process to watch.
Leave a Comment