The dress code for the 2022 Met Gala, “Gilded Glamour,” looked to be either a recipe for grandiose disaster or comedy when it was revealed. After all, the current era is frequently compared to the late-nineteenth-century Gilded Age, the period between 1870 and 1900 when extreme wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few, robber barons rose to prominence, and income inequality grew ever greater just beneath the gold veneer on the gleaming surface.
The Bradley-Martin Ball of 1897, a famously showy gala in which many of the participants, the good, great, and greedy of New York society, dressed up as Marie Antoinette, brought the first gilded age to a symbolic close. Queen Louise of Prussia, too.
Was this really the intention of the organizers?
,Or, according to one interpretation, the orchestrators of the present famously opulent Met Gala were implying that visitors dial it back, rewrite history, and show some restraint by evoking such a time. Stop dressing up as if you’re going to a costume party where the goal is to out-Instagram each other.
Nina Westervelt for The New York Times
When Blake Lively, a co-host, came in a shining copper Versace column draped in swaths of bustled silk that subsequently unfurled into a verdigris-toned train embroidered with the constellations of Grand Central Station, that idea was blown out of the water. It was a mash-up of skyscraper fantasies condensed into one magical changing gown. She donned matching opera gloves and a tiara inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Ryan Reynolds, her husband (and host), fell into obscurity next to her, dressed in a conventional white tie.
It established the tone for the rest of the evening.
Those that kept it subtle got lost amid the frenzy. Even Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, herald of the new golden age, and Twitter disruptor, dressed in his white tie and tails to suggest a responsible custodian of a public utility, scarcely created a ripple. There was simply too much to take in.
Nina Westervelt and Krista Schlueter
There was gold – gliding without the guilt, it seemed. (Of again, no one said that theme interpretations had to be subtle.) So there was Cardi B, dressed in more than a kilometer of body-conscious Versace chains and jewelry, and Megan Thee Stallion, dressed like a 24-karat Moschino Valkyrie in sparkling feathers and brocade. Carey Mulligan wore a Schiaparelli bustier and train adorned with 79,000 gold sequins, and Chloe Bailey wore a metallic, strapless Area column that mimicked the exaggerated curves and hips of a corset and pannier without the use of conventional body-shaping techniques.
Many others, though, did.
Corsets, capes, opera globes (best on Kodi Smit-McPhee, who wore his red Bottega Veneta pair with a white tuxedo shirt and “jeans” made of leather), tiaras (Hamish Bowles donned a Verdura crown last seen at Buckingham Palace in 1957), and trains were the evening’s accessories.
Billie Eilish, dressed like a Gothic bordello mistress in bustled Gucci satin and green lace – all recycled from the atelier’s textiles – may have made the tightest statement in the waist-cinching stakes. Like a sorbet Little Lord Fauntleroy, Lenny Kravitz in leather and lace, Paloma Elsesser in a white Coach ensemble, and Evan Mock in ice cream tones and a white Head of State neck ruff came near.
Feathers were also popular, as seen on honorary co-chair Anna Wintour (in Chanel), Nicola Coughlan (in Richard Quinn), and Emma Stone (in a white Louis Vuitton slip dress) and Hailey Bieber (in white Saint Laurent).
They were the evening’s palette cleansers, the yin to the yang of Vanessa Hudgens Moschino, Phoebe Dynevor’s Louis Vuitton, and Precious Lee’s Altuzarra (yes, another corset) peekaboo black gowns with deliberately placed period embellishments. On an evening of rapacious ruffles seemingly committed to the opposite idea, they were a reminder that sometimes less is indeed more.
Riz Ahmed, who said in a Vogue interview on the red carpet that his unbuttoned silk workwear shirt, tank top, and trousers tucked into knee-high boots were “a homage to the immigrant workers who kept the Gilded Age going,” said in a Vogue interview on the red carpet that his unbuttoned silk workwear shirt, tank top, and trousers tucked into knee-high boots were “a homage to the immigrant workers who kept the Gilded Age
The ensemble was designed by 4SDesigns, but the fact that the chain around his neck was a Cartier 18-karat white gold, platinum, chalcedony, turquoise, and diamond necklace added a layer of complexity.
Questlove, on the other hand, was wearing a Gee’s Bend quilt under his Zegna coat to honor “Black women who had died for their country.” “The gilded time is a little bit different for African Americans in our nation,” he explained.
They weren’t the only ones who tried to add layers to their clothing, at least conceptually. Hillary Clinton wore a burgundy Altuzarra gown with the names of 60 American women who had influenced her embroidered on the hem, including Abigail Adams, Clara Barton, Rosa Parks, and her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who attended the gala for the first time in two decades.
Mayor Eric Adams of New York, whose decision to attend the banquet was received with some controversy given the status of the city, wore a Laolu Senbanjo tailcoat with the slogan “End Gun Violence” on the back and lapels, as well as M.T.A. and other metropolitan emblems.
As it turned out, the city — or rather, its skyline — was also the inspiration for Alicia Keys’s gleaming Ralph Lauren column and cape, which featured the soaring silhouettes of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in silver on the hem, a nod to the equally soaring ambitions of the industrialists whose shaky legacy built this town. Similarly, Kaia Gerber’s steel-silver Alexander McQueen suggested Lady Godiva more than architecture, thanks to the swirls in her Titian hair.
Even said, Kim Kardashian, who made the final entry of the evening with Pete Davidson, topped them all when it came to channeling history. Not only because she squeezed herself into Marilyn Monroe’s legendary “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” nude dress — the very same one that Ms. Kardashian wore to ascend the steps before swapping it for a replica to get to dinner. Not simply because the entire Kardashian female brood had been invited for the first time.
It was because, by being the last to arrive, she, a reality TV star who had previously been excluded from the gala guest list, demonstrated conclusively that influence and fame, not pedigree and filthy lucre, are the true currency of success; the keys that unlock the doors of even the most exclusive events. Even more so today than during the real Gilded Age.
