The first Monday of May every year is possibly the most anticipated day for fashion enthusiasts. Whether or not you are interested in it, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) Gala has this contagious energy that manages to suck you right in. It’s not just another star-studded event, but one which somehow places us in a real-life dream via our screens. Everything beautiful and thought provoking that we can possibly imagine comes to life.
This year’s theme was “Camp: Notes on Fashion”, inspired by critical essayist and cultural analyst Susan Sontag’s iconic essay “Notes on Camp”, published in 1964. Sontag, who died in 2004, had noted in her essay that camp is just about sensibility but more so a particular preserve of the LGBT community. She further expressed that it was white gay men, “who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste”.
The theme does make for an ideal concept in the current climate, as it is one where fashion is constantly trying to navigate inclusivity but still somehow manage to cleverly maintain a hierarchy. However, at the same time, Camp in a sense should come natural as the whole idea is to be a tastemaker. Sontag had expressed, “The pure examples of Camp are unintentional”. But at such a star-studded event with everyone placing their artistic ability on steroids to earn the favour of followers and onlookers, it is difficult to cut through the noise to determine who is Camp and who isn’t.