Morgane Le Caer | 10.10.18 | Events
The Theme For Next Year’s Met Gala Has Just Been Revealed
Next year’s annual headline exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute is Camp: Notes on Fashion. Before you start thinking about campfire and tarpaulin, no, the theme is actually referring to ‘camp’ as in exaggerated fashion. Inspired by Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes On ‘Camp,'” of the Partisan Review from 1964, Sontag defines camp as “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”
Speaking about the new theme, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s curator in charge Andrew Bolton said the timing couldn’t be more right. “We are going through an extreme camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalised cultures,” Bolton told the New York Times. “Whether it’s pop camp, queer camp, high camp or political camp — Trump is a very camp figure — I think it’s very timely.”
To top the news of, it has also been revealed that the night will be co-chaired by Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Serena Williams, and the reviver of high-fashion camp – Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele.
The museum show has had a considerable impact on public opinion – last year’s Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination was the most-visited Costume Institute show in its history, and according to Bolton this exhibition is set to be even bigger and better. The exhibition is said to feature 175 pieces of 37 designers, including menswear and art pieces (sculptures, paintings, drawings), and will take museum-goers through the history of camp: from Versailles to the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the gay liberation movement which has since been made a national monument that you can still visit today.
At a time where the mainstream perception of male identity is under scrutiny, and outdated design cues associated with gender no longer represent the youth culture of today, the theme couldn’t be more relevant. This year we saw creative industries explore more nuanced ways to portray the complexities of gender, helping to advocate a highly decorative and embellished style that is free from restrictive stereotypes. This was put best by Bolton, who stated “I have started to think it is everywhere, and that all fashion is on some level camp. It has gained such currency it has become invisible, and part of my goal is to make it visible again.”
