How do you dress for a Gilded Age Met Gala during sky-high inflation?
Criticizing the Met Gala as elitist is nothing new, but this year’s gala theme presented a challenge
Criticizing the Met Gala as elitist is nothing new, but this year’s gala theme, “Gilded Glamour,” evoked a bygone era of gross income inequality during our modern-day era of gross income inequality and presented a challenge. How do you go gilded when inflation is on the rise?
Several attendees paid homage to the role of immigrants during the Gilded Age, including co-chair Blake Lively, whose copper-to-liberty-green Atelier Versace gown referenced the Statue of Liberty turning green due to oxidation. Riz Ahmed wore a jacket, trousers, and boots inspired by “the immigrant workers who kept the Gilded Age going,” he told Vanity Fair.
“I wanted to focus on the people without whom nothing gilded would exist: the laborers, the workers, the unseen,” Ahmed said. “This look is for everyone who thinks they don’t have a voice. They do.”
The “Tax The Rich” dress Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wore to the 2021 Met Gala was about as subtle as a MAGA hat. The unenthusiastic reception it got signaled the end of the “Resistance” era aesthetic, when politics was spelled out and worn on your sleeve. This year, former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wore a burgundy Altuzarra dress with the names of American women she admires sewn into the hem, but you had to squint to see it in photos.
Believe it or not, Kim Kardashian got the dress Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang “Happy Birthday” to JFK on loan from Ripley’s. In America: An Anthology of Fashion includes historical garments of its own, including a coat worn by George Washington, the coat Abraham Lincoln wore when he was assassinated, and a coat worn by an enslaved man.
In America: An Anthology of Fashion runs through Sept. 5 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.