Why Does the Met Gala Theme Make the Internet Crazy?

The Met Gala’s dress codes can often come across as esoteric, which is perhaps why some attendees misinterpret them or ‘get them wrong’, but they’re important and romantic reminders of what the Met celebrates, which is not just fashion and its curation, but an annual exhibition by the Costume Institute. What I’ve always taken from the idea of a dress code is that it enables each night to differentiate itself from the last, and allows the Met Gala to stand out from any other red carpet for its ripeness for storytelling through fashion.

All of this said, the Met Gala theme has never been compulsory or mandatory, but rather a suggestion to guests and an opportunity to show up and show off.

Met Gala 101

A quick history lesson: the Met Gala began in 1948 when publicist Eleanor Lambert — who also founded the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1962 — took it upon herself to throw a benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in the form of a private dinner somewhere in the city, not at the museum itself. Then came former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who took over in 1971, revamping the Met Gala and turning it into a glitzy and glamorous affair. She began hosting it at the museum, introduced themes and invited celebrities from Cher to Elizabeth Taylor and Elton John. The Met Gala as we know it started in 1995 when Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue and creative editorial director of Condé Nast, took charge. Thematic, glitzy, monumental, and on the first Monday in May of every year.

Even if dress codes were introduced at the Met Gala many years ago, it wasn’t until recently that guests became invested in following along. “At that event, people were kind of trickling in with little versions of the theme,” said model Amber Valletta on last week’s episode of Vogue’s ‘The Run-Through’ podcast, reminiscing on the 2004 ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century’ Met Gala — “and suddenly it became a costume ball.” Valletta recalled that she was in New York shooting Hitch when Wintour invited her. “She said, ‘I want you to go for it,’ and the Vogue team helped style me[…] But I do specifically remember having a few sharp, sarcastic comments. It was the fact that I had gone all the way and nobody was doing that yet.”

Not every theme warrants a costume, however. Celebrities, and the designer brand that dresses them (each fashion house invites their ambassadors, current muse, or models to dress by paying for a table at the gala) may opt to align their efforts to the brand’s latest collection or current storytelling, like when Louis Vuitton and Nicolas Ghesquière dressed a flock of their ambassadors in archival looks for the 2022 Met. Others may simply look to highlight the celebrity’s style in alignment with the house’s, like Kristen Stewart’s Chanel menswear look last year.

This year, The Garden of Time alludes to both the archival and naturalistic elements in the exhibition, but also a short story of the same name written in 1962 by JG Ballard about a count and his wife who reside in a utopian villa of ease and beauty overlooking a garden. For those online, if not everyone’s wearing an archival piece or a floral get-up this year, will they be considered a miss?

The internet of it all

Cue the commentary. Each year, there’s celebrations, shade, criticism and think pieces about the opulence of the evening. The dress code is the easiest and most straightforward way of judging a look. These yay-or-nay verdicts require little fashion knowledge, and that makes the content easy to create and even easier to consume. It’s a perfect storm, reflective of the specific moment of pop culture commentary we’re in.

Prior to Instagram and TikTok (both of which have sponsored recent Met Galas, it’s worth noting), those of us commenting online were talking about the Met, but posts didn’t travel the same way on Tumblr, or you had to visit blogs days later to get the full digest (remember Fashion Spot?). It was also simply not that serious — plus, the commentary was insular, not created with virality as its goal, and oftentimes based on what we found online by the media rather than preceding it.

That changed around 2014 when the ‘Punk’ theme generated more discourse thanks to Miley Cyrus’s sheer number. And by 2015, Rihanna became the first and most-memed Met Gala guest, with her infamous yellow Guo Pei coat filling the entirety of the Met staircase.

When fashion literacy makes us too literal

The problem with the internet becoming the Met dress code police is that it allows little room for the subtle interpretations that make fashion so interesting to look at. What made the ‘Camp’ Met Gala so compelling was that the theme, exacting as it was, left room for interpretation because it hinged on an understanding of an academic and esoteric concept.

But we now live in the age of “method dressing”, which was first introduced by Zendaya and stylist Law Roach to reference her films — from Spiderman to Dune and Challengers — on the red carpet while promoting them. It reached a fever pitch last year on Margot Robbie’s Barbie press tour. The popularity of this style of celebrity dressing is a direct reflection of this Met-dress code obsession. It’s thematic, literal, and easy to interpret: does that green dress count as tennis green? Is that look a direct Barbie reissue? Just because Rihanna dressed as a Pope once doesn’t mean that everyone should show up to the Met in costume, does it?

The reality is that events like the Met or the Oscars are also showcases for massive marketing efforts by brands. If you have something to promote, should you prioritize that over a suggested theme? Valentino outfitted Sebastian Stan and Glenn Close in Pink PP for the 2022 Met Gala to align with its pink commercial push for autumn 2022 — it would have been interesting to see the label riff off the Gilded Glamour code within the constraints of the push, yet we can’t blame them for sticking to their own agenda.

A possible path is perhaps what Billie Eilish and Oscar de la Renta did the year prior, when it was shared that the singer agreed to wear the brand as long as they’d commit to stop using fur. The look was arguably on theme with a nod to Marilyn Monroe, an American fashion icon.

Our collective obsession with the theme, I think, is twofold. Folks like to partake in the zeitgeist-y conversation, and the dress code allows for an easy way in. But the truth is that what all fashion fans love, too, is dreamy, fantastical fashion. What the Met Gala does is provide one night a year in which we are guaranteed fashion will be at its most creative and outlandish. Collections have, particularly since the pandemic, progressively leaned further into the commercial and the pragmatic. Fewer designers present clothes for the sake of capital-F ‘Fashion’, opting instead for what they will be putting in stores. It’s the way our industry has evolved, but for one night only, we get to dream on. Perhaps the internet commentariat should adjust expectations and lean into said fantasy.

Originally published in Voguebusiness.com