Met Gala The Party of the Year
Metropolitan Museum of Art ‘s Costume Institute
Dua Lipa, Roger Federer, Penélope Cruz, Michaela Coel, and Anna Wintour co-chaired this year’s chic Met Gala dubbed “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” This year, the ticket prices were raised from 35k to 50k—inflation has even hit the fashion world in 2023. I’ve been to every Met Gala since 1972, either as a guest, when tickets were 500 dollars apiece, or as a columnist, and this year did not disappoint. On the first Monday in May, couture clad A-Listers flock to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate fashion and raise the necessary funds to maintain the museum’s extraordinary Costume Institute. Each year, the sparkling benefit rakes in more money. Last year they raised over $17.4 million. The “Party of the Year” just keeps getting better, and this year proved more elegant than eccentric, which I’m sure “The Kaiser” would have approved. The designer was a central fixture in the fashion world with his work for Chanel, Fendi, Chloe, Balmain, Patou and his own eponymous brand. Lagerfeld, a lover of felines and fashion, was an outspoken foe of sweatpants and once said, “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.” His legend is cemented with this thoughtful and inspiring exhibition, which features over 150 garments spanning from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019. In 2013, he proclaimed, “I’ve always known that I was made to live this way, that I would be this sort of legend.” The show runs through July 16th. metmuseum.org
The White Carpet
Pearls, tweed, camellias, and cats were the holy quintuplet of this year’s gala. The museum’s steps were covered in a white carpet with red-and-blue swirling lines
referencing the exhibits’ theme. The steps were lined with wine racks of empty plastic bottles, and the main entrance featured an enormous column made up of thousands of them. The roof of the entrance tent was draped with white silk and festooned with crystal chandeliers. Among the actors, musicians, and socialites who stood out on the carpet were Jared Leto dressed as Lagerfeld’s beloved cat, Choupette, Doja Cat donning a prosthetic nose and lip to mimic the feline look, and a racy Lil Nas X covered in nothing but silver glitter, crystals, and a thong and wearing sky-high platforms. We can’t forget to mention a pregnant Rihanna, who arrived two hours late, in a cocoon of white camellias and a twenty-foot train. She was worth the wait!
The Exhibition
The exhibition is presented as a conceptual essay about Lagerfeld’s work and is based on William Hogarth’s book The Analysis of Beauty. Hogarth describes theories of art and aesthetics centered on the form of lines within its pages. The exhibition is anchored by two through lines, the serpentine line and the straight line, that represent conceptual expressions of Lagerfeld’s sketches. The serpentine signifying Lagerfeld’s historicist, romantic, and decorative impulses, while the straight indicates his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies.
These two lines are then divided into nine pairs of “sublines” to represent the dualities in his designs: feminine and masculine, romantic and military, rococo and classical, historical and futuristic, ornamental and structural, canonical and countercultural, artisanal and mechanical, floral and geometric, and figurative and abstract. To bridge the dualities together, there are, as the curators explained, “explosions,” or important garments which signify the convergence of the lines. His own sketches will be shown next to a majority of the pieces, underscoring his creative process and collaborative relationships with his premières d’atelier—the seamstresses responsible for translating Lagerfeld’s drawings into three-dimensional garments. These sketches serve as the introduction to the exhibition with illuminative videos showing Karl making the drawings in real time. Sketching was both Lagerfeld’s primary mode of creative expression and his primary mode of communication.
Closing the show is the satirical line, which comprises two parts. The first includes garments that communicate Lagerfeld’s razor-sharp wit expressed through ironic, playful, and whimsical embroideries. The second features ensembles that mirror the late designer’s self-image through various representations of his immediately recognizable black-and-white “uniform.”
Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met, said: “Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most captivating, prolific, and recognizable forces in fashion and culture, known as much for his extraordinary designs and tireless creative output as for his legendary persona.”
Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge, The Costume Institute, said: “The exhibition explores Lagerfeld’s complex working methodology, tracing the evolution of his fashions from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional. The fluid lines of his sketches found expression in recurring themes in his fashions, uniting his designs for Chanel, Chloé, Fendi, his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, and Patou, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion.”
The Décor
The Met Gala’s brilliant event planner, Raúl Àvila, created a modern and innovative installation. Architect Tadao Ando designed the exhibit. “It’s a nod to Karl’s love of everything cutting edge,”
said Vogue’s contributing editor Eaddy Kiernan, who helped plan the event.
The eco-friendly emphasis is an important detail. “Given today’s climate, we wanted to highlight the importance of giving our everyday items more than one life cycle,” Àvila explained. “We wanted to find a way to create a sustainable design that would implement the bottles into a breathtaking installation unlike anything we’ve done before.” The water bottles also flanked the staircase leading up to the gallery, reflecting the surrounding lights to make the entire design feel immersive.
The Dinner
The dinner was inspired by the wedding reception that Lagerfeld hosted for Paloma Picasso in 1978. The goal was to make it feel like a dinner at his home, and by all accounts, they succeeded. The lavish meal included chilled spring pea soup with baby vegetables, lemon crème fraiche, and truffle snow, followed by Ora King salmon with asparagus, pickled strawberries, and radish. The meal was served on vintage China with bouquets of pink flowers on the table. For drinks, there was a fine wine selection and a whimsical addition: cans of Diet Coke, one of Karl’s favorite drinks.