Dear Gossips,
Big news in fashion this morning – a new Costume Institute Exhibit and corresponding Met Gala theme has been announced. You’ll recall, the exhibit and the Met Gala next year was supposed to feature the work of John Galliano, and they confirmed it early, hoping to get ahead of any backlash. It was a strategy that ultimately backfired and the plans were scrapped just a month later. At the time, they had no plan B in place which is why it’s taken this long for them to conceive of a new idea.
Today it’s official, the new theme is “extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday” so… basically… athleisure. T-shirts and jeans, sweats made stylish, casual or unusual fabrics made luxurious, the coexistence of chic and comfort. This is a scramble. As The New York Times points out:
“The fact that the museum announced the new exhibition quietly via a news release on Thursday morning, rather than the bells and whistles of its usual celebrity-filled news conference, reflects the rush to get a second choice ready after the Galliano show went off the rails. As does the fact that there are currently no plans for an accompanying catalog.”
The title of that NYT article is that the new theme is “as Uncontroversial as Possible” – and I don’t know about that, this is the Met Gala, after all… and they somehow always find their way to controversy, whether it’s the theme or the sponsors or whatever guest shows up to f-ck around. Speaking of sponsors though, they have one: Instagram/Meta, which has sponsored the show before. And in terms of a fashion sponsor, it’s Moncler which tracks with the theme given with the brand’s signature puffer jackets: taking a utility item and making it Fashion.
But in terms of what we might see on that red carpet and those steps next May, someone could arrive in a tracksuit and be on theme. Everything, really, is on theme if you can make it “everyday” – even a ballgown, depending on the material. So it’ll be that much more interesting who the celebrity co-chairs (as yet not announced) will end up being. The first name that came to mind for me was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander… but considering that his first priority is to take OKC deep into the playoffs and eventually win another championship, there is no way that he could commit to an event on the first Monday in May.
If we’re talking about this theme, though, everyday clothing that went from the streets to the runway, ordinary clothes that became trendy, we cannot ignore once again the influence of Black tastemakers – styling choices that originated in hip-hop culture that then were widely embraced by everyone else, eventually going mass market in the late 90s and 2000s.
Speaking of 2000s fashion trends that meet the theme though… like who’s showing up in a Juicy Couture track suit and True Religion jeans and also trucker hats, LOLOLOL.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
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