Lifestyle
Why Everyone Was So Mad About the Met Gala
There are, as I’m writing this, just shy of 500 reader comments on our recap of our 15 favorite looks from the Met Gala on Monday. The top comments are almost all negative.
“I’m sorry. I find this display of ‘fashion’ disgusting and I wish the NYT wouldn’t celebrate it,” reads the most recommended comment. “I’m struck by how out of touch and unrelatable this feels for the average American,” is the one just below that. A few down we get the first of many comparisons to the elitist incongruity captured in “The Hunger Games.”
The uneasy state of the American economy watered the soil for this sentiment to grow. Gas prices have soared since the onset of the war in Iran. The cost of groceries remains stubbornly high. The word “inequality” came up five times in the comments section of our story. It seems that the gala, to some, landed as a financially frivolous, Marie Antoinette-like affair.
For a few years, the Met Gala has ignited these “Hunger Games” comparisons, as the event has mutated into a competition of which attendee can wear the most baroque, procession-halting dress. I lost count of the celebrities who proudly shared how many hours it took to make their ensembles.
This, more than anything, seemed like the point where they were misjudging the simmering animus toward them.
If the intention was to laud the work and elevate the craftsmanship involved in making garments like these, it was ringing hollow in this forum, where tickets cost upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a table. The opulence of the clothes became another example of billionaire class entitlement for a cause most people don’t benefit from.
It’s not an entirely new conversation, even if the critiques were louder this year. Five years ago, when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a dress splayed with “Tax the Rich,” she sprayed lighter fluid onto a hot conversation about the class politics of this particular charity event. (At this year’s gala, Sarah Paulson arrived with a dollar bill stretched over her eyes, an intended critique on the influence of money that many viewers saw as a hollow gesture.)
The discourse roared with a particular fervor in the lead-up to Monday for the marquee presence of Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest couples.
Placing the Bezoses at the apex of the gala ratcheted up the sense that something already well outside the reaches of the average person had been taken to a new tier of exclusivity. There were protests centered around Bezos, and at the event Christian Smalls, a former Amazon union leader, attempted to storm the carpet. He was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors.
“It shouldn’t be that way when you have all of this money and wealth,” Smalls said of Bezos in an interview with The Times on Wednesday. “He should pay his workers a fair share.”
In responding to cries of elitism, the Met Gala’s organizers have long pointed to the money that the event raises. They did so again this year. At a news conference on Monday introducing the Met’s new fashion exhibition, Anna Wintour, the event’s longtime chair (and the global editorial director of Vogue magazine), shared that this was the most successful Met Gala ever, having raised $42 million.
“That money could feed and clothe many hundreds of less fortunate people,” read the top comment on our Met Gala story.
We’ve come to expect anti-celebrity comments when we cover cultural events. “Who cares!” is a common, if slightly disingenuous, refrain given how many readers clamor to see and vote on their favorite looks from awards shows.
But there’s a meaningful difference between the Met Gala and many other red carpet events. At the Oscars or the Emmys, the arrivals lead to a star-studded performance the public can watch, shows with a purpose — celebrating talent (subjective though that is) — that is self-evident. For the viewing public, the Met Gala ends at the doorstep of the museum. If you’re watching at home, the gala can be seen as nothing more than a bunch of grandiose clothes that lead nowhere.
In reading up on the life of Ted Turner, who died Wednesday at 87, I perked up at this five-word sentence in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2010 profile of the media mogul: “He dressed like a cowboy.” It led me to scroll through photos of the Cincinnati-born businessman — especially in the 1970s, when he was sailing in a piqué polo and an incongruous striped conductor’s cap or taking in his Atlanta Braves with his button-up shirt undone to mid-chest.
Turner, a college dropout, who was a prolific drinker (and philanderer), looked rugged — swashbuckling even. He was, it should be said, handsome. In some images, Turner, with his modest mustache, looks like Robert Redford’s body double. But it’s remarkable to visit these images now, when all corporate titans — of media, tech and otherwise — dress so alike. They’re Sun Valley clones in their fleece vests, stretch chinos and dad caps that they theatrically pull low in front of cameras.
But Turner was indeed a telecom cowboy, upending how networks ran in his rugby shirts, knit ties and denim. He looked suave. How few media C.E.O.’s can we say that about now?
Everywhere I go I see young men in ribbed tank tops, sometimes with unbuttoned shirts on top, but often not. The tank tops can be black, white or gray, but they’re worn with everything — not just as undershirts, as I was taught was correct. What is going on? — Richard, Philadelphia
The tank top may seem basic — just a sleeveless cotton top with a scooped neck — but as a garment it contains multitudes. It has roots in the working class and the professional class, the military and the farm, men’s wear and women’s wear, sports and Hollywood, gay culture, rap culture, gym culture and indie sleaze. Read more …