Red Carpet Radicals: The Met Gala Really Wanted to Make a Statement
The New York Times
This year’s theme was American Independence. Patriotism, pop culture and politics were in fashion, but to what end?
On the second Monday in September, upper Fifth Avenue lit up with a blitz of flashbulbs not seen in over two years.
The Met Gala — like Broadway, like New York Fashion Week, like the U.S. Open — had returned, and with it the extreme pageantry that it inspires as guests and the designers who dress them vie to see who can create the most viral look according to theme.
The dress code this year was “American Independence.” (It was linked to the Costume Institute exhibition it celebrated, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”) What exactly that means is a question George and Martha Washington probably never had to contemplate (even Dolley Madison, the resident founding fashionista, likely didn’t ask), but the gala provided a variety of answers: some obvious, some more pointed, all plumbing the mythology of the country — historical, pop cultural, and just plain fantastical.
