Night At The Museum

Behind the plumage and excess from the first Monday of May lay the hidden cues that might shape the industry in the year ahead

- Tanya Mehta

It all began with the video of a bare-faced Kim Kardashian being painstakingly laced into a breath-constricting corset by an entourage of hands, turning the circumference of her waist into an inexplicably tiny measure (maybe that itself was the essence of ‘Camp’ – extreme proportions). The Met Gala, aka ‘Fashion’s Oscars’ never fails to evoke, it’s the ritualistic goodness of watching your favorite celebrities step out of the comfort zone of traditional red carpet dressing and throw on their most eccentric, conversation triggering outfits, courtesy your best-loved designers. And this year’s edition, based on American author Susan Sontag’s pivotal essay, Notes on ‘Camp’, drew ambiguous results. Miss Kardashian later went onto don a sheer mini dress by Manfred Thierry Mugler. Dripping in crystals, the outfit, resembling a notorious ‘wet T-shirt’, referenced Sophia Loren’s soaked look from the 1957 film Boy on a Dolphin.

That same evening, Lady Gaga, a co-chair for the gala, redefined the term ‘making an entrance’. Flanked by a posse of fabulously suited men, and designer Brandon Maxwell, who created her outfit, Gaga wafted into the venue in a gargantuan fuchsia cape dress. What unfolded was a series of outfit changes, as she preened, crawled and even made up her face, all in various stages of undress, caricaturing a pin-up girl. There were also the Jenner sisters, impersonating exotic birds in feathered Versace gowns, making them easy meme targets. That’s the thing about Camp, it’s ridiculous and unexpected.

In her treatise, Sontag states, “Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others. Clothes, furniture, all the elements of visual decor, for instance, make up a large part of Camp. For Camp, art is often decorative art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content”.