Why there should never be another Met Gala

Last night, I was stirred from my slumber by the low, ambient hum of neoliberals chanting, “you have to separate the art from the artist. You have to separate the art from the artist.” And I knew that could only mean one thing: the Met Gala.

Like many Bratz Dollz before me, I have a passion for fashion. In year 5, I won my primary school’s Fashions on the Field award for being the most colour-coordinated. Sure, the field may have been a stretch of pavement between the classroom and the handball court, but a field nonetheless. I wore a brown stretch dress from Dotti and my mum’s brown hat, which was far too big for my prepubescent head. So, needless to say, I am a fashion expert.

The Met Gala has proven itself out of touch and out of date.

I love a good red carpet, as it is the colour least likely to show food stains (the Oscar’s champagne carpet was no friend to us here in the heavy snacking community.) And rating celebrity looks is the one sport that unites chronically online children with their Australian Women’s Weekly reading parents. The Met Gala is the ultimate red carpet. It’s the fashion event of the year, where major fashion houses dress the biggest names in entertainment.

All guests are invited at the behest of Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour. It’s Willy Wonka’s golden ticket for people immorally taking Ozempic. Previous Met Galas have given us amazing works of art including Cher’s sheer Rob Mackie original, Rihanna’s iconic Guo Pei yellow gown, and Karlie Kloss looking camp right in the eye. But this year’s theme Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty exemplifies why the Met Gala is looking irrelevancy right in the eye.

Now you may be asking, doesn’t this event raise crucial funding for a museum? In a sense, yes. The “Met” part of Met Gala is not, in fact, short for Met Her on a Monday by Craig David Gala. Rather, it’s a signature event to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Culture in New York. It will surprise no one to know that I love a museum. I am homely. But suggesting that celebrities attending an invitation-only event is somehow necessary to benefit society is some real bourgeoisie shit. Let you eat cake, nerd.

Last year, the Met Gala contributed $US17.4 million to the museum; approximately 7 per cent of their overall fundraising income for 2022 according to percentagecalculator.com. Not a percentage to sniff at, but considering Met Gala attendee and underpants billionaire Kim Kardashian makes more money eating her morning Weet-Bix than I do in a calendar year, the numbers don’t justify the cost of excusing Karl Lagerfeld’s dangerous past.

You’ll see a lot of opinion pieces saying Lagerfeld had a “complex” legacy. Which is code for “was a very bad person.” He held a level of contempt for the female body normally reserved for former Australian Idol hosts. He was racist, Islamophobic, and his diet book contributed to the normalisation of disordered eating. In short, he sucked.

But the issue is bigger than Lagerfeld. If I say to you “Marilyn Monroe white dress,” you know what I’m talking about. The Monroe dress has imprinted the notion of what it means to be a woman on society. Moments in our culture reverberate, like soundwaves travelling through a music festival. We’re not just standing there, passively listening while we wait 30 minutes to use a dramatically soiled portaloo. Whether we listen or not, we absorb the sounds in our lovely, fleshy bodies that Karl Lagerfeld would have hated, and it becomes a part of us for a time.

The song playing at the 2023 Met Gala was the same boring tune that’s been pumped out far too many times before by the gatekeepers of cultural institutions: your body isn’t good enough, you are not good enough, this art is not for you. I hate this song. But it gets so much air time that no matter where you go, you can’t avoid it. It’s the Harry Styles of self-loathing rhetoric.

This year did deliver some truly breathtaking works of art. Harris Reed created the prettiest pink sculpture for Ashley Graham. Schiaparelli had Michaela Coel dripping in jewels from head to toe. Chanel ambassador Kristen Stewart dressed as Rod Stewart in his prime (in the best possible way.) And multiple celebrities paid fashionable tribute to Choupette Lagerfeld, the adorable and very much alive cat of Karl Lagerfeld who lives the life of an 18th century monarch.

Dua Lipa, Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Margot Robbie at this year’s Met Gala.Credit: Getty

But what I will take away from this year’s Met, beyond the fashion hits and misses, is the crushing reality that we live in a world that values the ideas of men over the dignity of people. This is a sentiment that you can apply week in and week out to stories of powerful men who face any level of consequence for their actions. Yet still, we forgive, defend and ignore the actions of those who see certain groups in our society as less than human, if they have talent.

Lagerfeld did have talent. He had a vision. But no work of art, no piece of clothing, no creative contribution to the world should come at the expense of feeling safe in our bodies. If Mr Squiggle, the man from the moon, used his giant pencil nose to draw hate symbols, I wouldn’t say, “oh, but his doodles are so incredible.” No, I’d say get stuffed moon man.

Lagerfeld’s comments are more than just mean words. When they’re said by someone at his level of influence, they become gospel. And the Met Gala is still singing from that song sheet.

The thing that I love about fashion is the capacity for expression. To paraphrase Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, your outfit can say so much about you before you’ve even said a word. We don’t need the Met Gala to take the lead on how to tell the world who we are. Be the Bratz Doll you want to see in the world. Wear outfits that are wrong, that make you feel good, that are expensive, that are cheap as chips, that initially belonged to another doll that you’ve since lost. Make art that is for you.

The Met Gala has clearly intimated that it’s not listening to us. So, let’s not listen to it. And instead, listen to the classic hit Met Her on a Monday by Craig David.

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