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On theme: the meaning behind what they’re wearing on the Met Gala red carpet

This year’s Met Gala theme proved an easy – and complex – one for guests to interpret. Here’s who nailed it.

Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP
Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP

The first Monday in May means one thing in New York, nay the world, and that is The Met Gala. Under the stewardship of Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue and the chief content officer of Condé Nast, the once staid society gala has become a blockbuster fashion and cultural touchstone.

Held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this year’s theme is The Garden of Time, taking inspiration from The Met’s newest exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, and a reference to British writer J. G Ballard’s short story of the same name.

The exhibition is an examination of pieces in the Met’s archives that are too fragile and delicate to be worn and have been reanimated with technology, AI and soundscapes. Promising, as per the Met, to “serve as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion and a vehicle to examine the cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal.” The exhibition also includes iconography related to nature. While Ballard’s short story – a mediation on class, creation and the end of things- is, as many commentators have noted, a somewhat deliciously ironic source of inspiration for an event attended by the one per cent in both a fiscal and cultural cache sense and watched by millions of the rest of us.

But back to the clothes!

Mindy Kaling attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Mindy Kaling attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

This is after-all, while most of us really here?

Unlike previous year’s themes such as Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, Camp: Notes on Fashion and Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, this year’s theme is both easier, and harder, to get right. That said, it’s always subjective

For example you could wear florals (for spring!) and be entirely on theme. Or look to the past to physically embody the idea of reanimating and reimagining fashion, such as Nicole Kidman who wore a ruffled monochrome Balenciaga dress inspired by a 1951 dress from the couture house and one she saw in a Richard Avedon photo. Other celebrities such as model Emily Ratajkowski in fall/winter Atelier Versace haute couture 2001, wore vintage looks.

Ayo Edebiri attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Ayo Edebiri attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

Evocations of a garden, of flowers in bloom and rot and the cycle of life, was the MO for many of this year’s attendees. This included The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri in lush floral brocade Loewe that looked so vivid it was almost alive, Lily James in simple silk Erdem with wilting black flowers applied all over and Gigi Hadid in full va va voom off-the-shoulder white and floral sculptural gown from American designer Thom Browne which was created by 70 people and represented hours of intricate work. Meanwhile Rebecca Hall’s floral details from her Danielle Frankel gown snaked up her arm in tattoos, Amanda Seyfried was a gleaming silver forest nymph in silver custom Prada and Demi Moore wore a dramatic curved and caped gown by Harris Reed. The dress was inspired by vintage wallpaper and required some 11, 000 hours of silk embroidery to have her, as Reed said on the red carpet “blooming on the red carpet.”

Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Sarah Jessica Parker attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Elle Fanning attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Elle Fanning attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

Floral details could be found in many of the male attendees’ button holes and, pleasingly, in Challenger’s star Josh O’Connor’s flower printed boots worn with his Loewe tux (complete with spiked tails) and musician Jon Batiste’s waistcoat.

Explorations of delicacy and fragility and the inability to escape the passing of time were evoked by many attendees too with lots of cobwebby, ethereal, drapey designs such as Greta Lee in sheer, lace Loewe, Kim Kardashian in grey open-worked custom Maison Margiela and Emma Chamberlain in wispy black lace Jean Paul Gaultier.

The various creatures and critters to exist in a garden were evoked too, Elle Fanning was the embodiment of an enchanting butterfly in delicate Balmain and Cartier jewellery, and Australian singer Troye Sivan also had a little butterfly on his custom Prada 2018 look that he “wanted to reawaken and reimagine.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary- and on the internet, divisive – example was Lana Del Rey, who looked like a magical forest creature awoken from a nap of 100 years with her gauzy headpiece held aloft with what looked like twigs worn with custom Alexander McQueen. After-all, nobody does a dark fairytale better than Alexander McQueen. In her hands, del Rey carried a single red rose, a symbol of the last petals in the Ballard short story.

Zendaya attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Zendaya attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

Moments frozen in time was an idea captured by the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, a regular Met Gala attendee whose heavily embellished Richard Quinn dress featured a corset-esque shape that could be from any era. The passing of time was also, quite literally, captured by Australian NBA player Ben Simmons whose Met Gala look was accessorised with a suitcase embellished with a clock on it.

The sense of lushness in decay, of the rot seeping in, was evoked by the likes of Challengers star and red carpet favourite Zendaya whose dramatic – and divisive – Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano creation (based on a 1999 Dior dress) was embellished with leaf-inspired details. Meanwhile the sculptural Gaurav Gupta gown worn by Mindy Kaling and Jennifer Lopez in beaded Schiaparelli with peaked shoulders signalled enduring grandeur despite it all.

Lana Del Rey attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images
Lana Del Rey attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. Picture: Getty Images

Spanish luxury house, Loewe, currently designed under creative director Jonathan Anderson, who this year served as an honorary chair of the event, was a winner of the night dressing several of the best-dressed guests. He joined this year’s Met Gala chairs including music stars Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, US actor Zendaya and Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, who made his Met Gala debut this year accompanied by his wife Elsa Pataky.

Other Australians in attendance included filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and his costume designer wife Catherine Martin, pop icon Kylie Minogue and Naomi Watts who channelled her Swans alter-ego and society queen bee Babe Paley in custom Balenciaga with a pillowy cape and white opera gloves. Another example of how time is ever passing, but on occasion can stop us short.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/on-theme-the-meaning-behind-what-theyre-wearing-on-the-met-gala-red-carpet/news-story/e56516f726c04be313d7ed44fd459a32