The Met Gala: The Intrigue

The Met Gala this year augurs more drama, more anticipation and more intrigue

than ever in its 73-year history. Though many will come to hail the 2020 Met Gala as

‘’the first Influencer Met Gala’’ what with the pared-down guest list filled with Influencers like TikTok Queen Addison Rae and Billie Eilish types. It will still be hailed “the party of the year,” and still be regarded as one of the world’s most successful and renowned fundraising galas.

In other words, The Met Gala is the Super Bowl of fashion parties and the world will be watching to see how Anna Wintour pulls off staging one of the first fashion

extravaganzas of the post-pandemic era. And for Anna, it’s also personal after her

annus horribilis that was 2020. She returns to show she’s held on to her crown after the most bruising year as fashion’s supreme imperatrix to remain on top of her pedestal. Wintour faced down a scathing memoir that detailed her savagery from one of her closest confidantes, Andre Leon Talley, and has reigned over a massive brain drain too when some of the most cherished Condé Nast creative minds across the globe were seemingly let go en masse. Conde Nast, today, is a shell of itself and Anna, more than ever, needs some cheering up. She’s dealt with picket signs and demonstrations from unionized staff from the hallowed New Yorker screaming outside her maisonette in the West Village for better pay. And yet, she emerges from the ruins of Condé Nast with an even grander and more important title. She is still here: Vogue Editor-in-Chief, US Artistic Director and Global Content Advisor of Condé Nast. And so, rest assured that despite down-sizing and mask mandates the 2021 version of The Met Gala will be Anna Wintour’s biggest nose snub to all her haters.

 

And, oh so much fascinating intrigue to consider. ‘In America: A Lexicon of Fashion’ is the banalest thesis title ever in the history of any Costume Institute exhibition! And the pre-Met Gala narrative amongst insiders is that this year is not shaping up to be an epic Met Gala as ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ from 2011 – the most successful ever. The most one can hope then, is that this won’t be one of the worst like the flop Met Gala of 1999 – ‘Rockstyle,’ which was a total bomb. One thing we do know for sure is that the 2021 Met Gala will be the most woke and that greenwashing is now very much in vogue. The Met Gala is going completely vegan this year with a 100% plant-based menu curated by Chef Marcus Samuelsson and a team of ten chefs. No word yet if the names and place cards will be full-on pronouns. You know, the full-on– he, him, his or is it- it? These are the days before you air kiss you have to make sure to have the proper pronoun in your head.

 

We also will soon know if Gwynnie (Paltrow) made the list. After all, she is the one famous for saying, ”I’m never going again,” after trolling her Met Gala experience of

2016. Will Gwyneth eat humble pie and show up for the first time in five years with her new husband Brad Falchuk? Karlie Kloss once said that ”getting an invitation to The Met Gala is like being transported to another universe.” For sure FOMO will be fomenting this year as it is every year. Raul Avila, the Event Designer of this uber galactic charity since 2007, will have devised the most spectacular red-carpet setting. For sure, it will be the most wired and Instagram-ready Met Gala ever. After all, the CEO of Instagram Adam Mosseri is one of this year’s Honorary Chairs which can only mean he’s the one footing the bill for what could be the most monumental bacchanal Anna Wintour has ever orchestrated.

 

The Vogue press office makes it clear that The Met Gala is where Wintour invites ”the boundary-pushing stars of fashion, entertainment, and politics that have ever graced the covers of Vogue.” So, can you imagine the peacocking that’s going to take place on that red carpet when Billy Porter encounters the new red carpet rival in Lil Nas X? And speaking of peacocks — the face-off between Timothee Chalamet versus Harry Styles versus Zayn Malik will be one for the ages. And who will Kim Kardashian show up with? Will she do a Beyonce who after her scandalous Met Gala night of 2014 was still so embarrassed about that Standard Hotel elevator incident that she skipped the following year. In 2016, Beyonce came stag in this eye-popping latex Givenchy number that had everyone rubbernecking. Will Billie Eilish give her ‘stans’ full-on Marilyn Monroe reincarnate in some Dior couture? Will Lady Gaga be awarded Anna Wintour’s most coveted slot of her A-List invitees and be allowed to arrive last? Or will that coveted slot go to Rihanna and her boyfriend ASAP Rocky? Or the movie star of the summer Ryan Reynolds and his beautiful wife? Or will it again be Beyonce and Jay Z? This will be the intrigue of the season– who gets to arrive last. Some may be wondering- what will Nikki Minaj do when she sees Cardi B for the first time since their red-carpet catfight a few seasons back at the Plaza Hotel? Others say – I don’t think those two made Anna’s list this year. The Met Gala has long been that social occasion to step up the game and truly make a social statement. Such as Iman debuting her trophy husband David Bowie at what was the only highlight of that 1999 Met Gala we discussed earlier. The 2019 Met Gala however debuted what’s become known as the Activist Red Carpet statement when the actor Lena Waithe and the fashion designer Kerby Jean-Raymond turned up in wide striped suits and cowboy boots with jackets blaring – ‘Black Drag Queers Invented Camp’. Activist fashionistas were very much on theme that year. This year there is a big buzz around the race car driver Sir Lewis Hamilton. This year he’s the baller you want to ball with. He bought an entire table ($200,000) for him and his closest glamour buddies for this year. He’s upping his game as the most eligible bachelor on the planet and insiders are wondering does he truly have any game? He would be the talk of the town by hosting the best after-party ever! Either at his swanky Manhattan penthouse or why not at the still to be unveiled and fabulously reinvented Waldorf Astoria where the very first Met Gala took place. If he managed to pull something like that off then Lewis Hamilton would catapult to being the most eligible catch on the planet.

 

The first time Anna Wintour ever attended any Met Gala was in 1989. She arrived looking like the wide-eyed ingenue she was for ‘The Age of Napoleon: Costume

Revolution to Empire, 1789-1815’ and dressed in a simple short black skirt and an embellished gold top wrapping her neck to sleeves. Back then she was still a minor

fashion editor at New York magazine. By 1995 she was large and in charge and the first year she hosted The Met Gala with her two closest fashion designer friends Gianni Versace and Karl Lagerfeld. Somehow, she decided not to host in 1996 when Liz Tilberis of Harper’s Bazaar was more than happy to take up the reigns. And Liz called on her ultimate calling card– the one and only Princess Diana of Wales– to host that year as Honorary Chair. On a personal note, the Met Gala of 1996 with Liz Tilberis was the only Met Gala GW has ever attended. And I will never forget that moment Princess Diana waltzed through the Great Hall of the Met and took every breath away. One remembers most Diana’s still-unmatched aura of genuine class, sophistication and how warm and accessible she was–even to me! I remember my moment most because of the stunning and unforgettable choker of pearls, clasped by a huge blue sapphire, that graced her neck. The frock was simple, but for the unforgettable Princess of Wales, that bit of Windsor jewellery was all she needed. And Anna Wintour, she may never admit, has regretted that faux pas of 1996 and of not hosting her sophomore gala. Ever since she has made sure to hold the reigns and set the imprimatur for the charity galas of all galas.

 

But it was that other legendary Vogue imperatrix, Diana Vreeland who, in 1972, truly set the template for The Met Gala as we know it today. Ms. Vreeland was the grand dame who took this annual ball to the next level. In 1974, when Cher became the first bonafide Hollywood star to grace The Met Gala with her presence in a beaded Bob Mackie jumpsuit– the Associated Press, Reuters and every newswire in the world stood up and took notice of this event in a way it never had before. Ms Vreeland’s most iconic Met Gala remains ‘Yves Saint Laurent and Diaghilev: Costumes and Designs of the Ballets Russes’ in 1978. But by 1976 Vreeland already had tongues wagging after she infused the Great Hall of the Met with wafts of expensive Chanel Eau de perfume, a scent created in 1924 (‘Cuir de Russie’).

 

The Vreeland Met Gala years were ruled by the leading society swans of the day. There is a famous image from 1983 of Yves Saint Laurent and the ultimate swan of the era, Jacqueline de Ribes with her elongated neck clad in a quadruple strand, a-la-Diana- of-the most exquisite pearls seated next to designer Bill Blass chain-smoking his way through dinner in the Temple of Dendur. Let’s just say kids, that was

#DefinitiveVintageMetGala! The Diana Vreeland years were the cloistered eras of true high society all gathering for a great cause and led by the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Pat Buckley, Nan Kempner, Ann Slater, and the visiting Imelda Marcos types. It was the era of the dowager socialite in haute couture who saved her best look for the annual ball to benefit the Met Museum’s Costume Institute. That’s the ultimate denouement for the Diana Vreeland years of The Met Gala.

 

And when all is said and done Diana Vreeland and Anna Wintour owe it all to the

original fashion legend, Eleanor Lambert. None of us would remain inspired by the still undervalued and under-appreciated legacy of Eleanor Lambert. She remains the

original fashion influencer icon. Anna Wintour must one day come to adhere to the fact that Eleanor Lambert invented The Met Gala. When Eleanor Lambert decided to stage a midnight supper in December of 1948 (the very same month Prince Charles was born and christened at Buckingham Palace!), she asked her closest friends to cough up $50 to show up for her very first Met Ball, as it was known then, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Eleanor Lambert will be popping bubbles from her grave to know that one ticket to the 2021 Met Gala will cost Anna Wintour’s friends $30,000!

 

Maybe in 2022– at the next Met Gala which is now only a few months away next May. Anna Wintour will do the right thing and grant due homage and dedicate next

year’s gala to Eleanor Lambert. For now, the intrigue will be who are the 450 chosen to be part of her don’t-call-it-a-comeback-party? And the images from that night will be studied by keen fashion eyes for months to come. Who will flail and who will flourish on the most important red carpet of 2021? Who will set the narrative for the zeitgeist of future fashion? And have us agog– for days–and gagging kudos on the Insta, the TikTok and the Twittersphere? Will this Met Gala be even more of a campy and kitschy extravaganza as the over-the-top galas of 2004, 2008 and especially 2019? One fact we know is that Demi Lovato, who raged in 2014 that The Met Gala is ”fake and sucking the fashion industry’s d—”, won’t ever have to worry about ever being invited to another Met Gala- ever.