Those actors who have pledged vows to fashion houses (or at least, signed contracts with them) showed their constancy with looks that mined clerical robes for the most this-season silhouette. Frances McDormand consolidated her role as 2018’s designated maverick by coming as “a pagan”, she said on the red carpet, in her butterfly headdress by Philip Treacy for Valentino. Like all the best dress codes, the Met Gala invitation allowed for lots of individuality. When the Emperor Constantine moved his capital east to Constantinople and allowed the pontiffs to assume control the old capital, Rome, they incorporated some of the clothing and accessories worn by the Roman emperors who had ruled before them, the better to legitimise their power in the eyes of the people of Rome.Īlicia Vikander in Louis Vuitton. And the aesthetic of papal garments has roots in worldly power, as well as spiritual.
The word halo – an accessory seen last night on Solange Knowles in Iris Van Herpen and Lily Collins in Givenchy, among others – means glory. (You can buy the perfect party dress, but you can’t actually buy romance or joy or fun.) Religious imagery has long employed the same porous boundaries, conjuring the invisible into life.
Fashion deliberately blurs the boundaries between things that you have the power to change and the things you don’t. The transactional business of fashion is a multimillion-pound industry precisely because it taps into powerful emotions and desires. The look was a version of an ensemble designed by Galliano during his time at Christian Dior that appeared on the catwalk in 2000 worn by a man, and is included in the Met exhibition.įrances McDormand in a headdress by Philip Treacy for Valentino. She wore a heavily embellished mini dress under a matching cloak, accessorised with a pointed mitre, stiletto heels and pearls strung around one ankle – because, after all, there’s not always room for a rosary in a clutch bag – all created for her by John Galliano for the house of Maison Margiela. In the season of the first Millicent Fawcett statue and of a Christian Dior slogan T-shirt namechecking Linda Nochlin’s feminist essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists”, RiRi gave us a female pope. Rihanna attacked this theme with her signature fearlessness and blew everyone else out of the water. The obvious link between the world presided over by Pope Francis and the one ruled by Queen Anna Wintour is that clothing delineates status. Photograph: Benjamin Lozovsky/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock You have to dig deep for this night, because Met Gala triumph requires not just beauty but bravery and a leap of faith. A supermodel can wear a tight dress and high heels and sail through almost every other public occasion with flying colours, but that look is a fast track to being completely ignored at the Met. What is special about the Met red carpet – by comparison, for instance, with Cannes – is that you can’t win it just by looking good. To succeed on this red carpet required honouring the theme of Catholicism in fashion without being seen to make fun of it. In their Manhattan hotel rooms, celebrities dress for this event with a level of meticulous ceremony which would befit a Sunday at St Peters. Even when it looks absurd to outsiders – remember the omelette dress of 2015? – the fashion seen on the Met Gala red carpet has been considered and planned with the solemnity of a papal conclave. In a world in which dressing up matters and sartorial symbolism carries a very real weight, the Met Gala is the most important night of the year.
Fashion takes clothes very, very seriously.
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