Welcome to the first Monday in May! Which of course is the second anniversary of the night we learned the Supreme Court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade. (The official anniversary is May 3.) It’s also the Met Gala. And what better way to disassociate from the bleak state of reproductive rights and diminishing access to abortion in the U.S. than by commenting on rich celebs wearing million-dollar gowns?
The 2024 Costume Institute exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is titled “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” (The exhibit itself sounds pretty cool.) Specifically, the Met Gala dress code is “The Garden of Time,” inspired by a short story from 1962 by J.G. Ballard which is about an aristocratic couple listening to Mozart in their garden of giant magical flowers while an angry mob of furious serfs descend on their big, beautiful villa. Every time the husband, Count Axel, cuts a flower, time turns back and the mob gets further away. But the couple does not enjoy a happy ending.
There’s, erm, a lot to be said about this being the theme for an extravagant ball (which is co-chaired this year by Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Funny, and Chris Hemsworth) full of the richest and most beautiful people in the world. Like, maybe how the Gala just barely avoided being overshadowed by a strike from the Condé Nast Union because the company was barely paying their employees a living wage? Or maybe how there’s a genocide in Gaza, funded in part by the U.S. giving Israel money and weapons? Or maybe how the student protests against said genocide are being shut down by cops across the country and at least two universities canceled their graduations because their students were…protesting a genocide. Anyway…
At the very least, it’s a broad yet pOeTiC theme that I hope means we’ll see some gorgeous villains or funky ensembles that evoke class warfare. Unfortunately, the word “garden” probably means we’ll just see a lot of flowers.
But you never know! So without further ado, let’s see how the celebs interpreted a dystopian story about the ultra-wealthy barricading themselves away from life as a not ultra-wealthy. Should be fun.
