I’ll be the first to admit that, these days, I don’t pay very much attention to fashion industry news or, similarly, celebrity news – and, by extension, the intersection of the two. I used to be an avid red-carpet watcher and I’m not anymore. But the Met Gala remains an exception, mostly because it’s the one major occasion where there’s a chance of interesting fashion displays. So, of course, I checked out this year’s event and … I have thoughts. Naturally.
In short, it was both fun and disappointing.
Let me explain.
On a purely aesthetic level, I enjoyed a lot of the outfits on the Met Gala red carpet. They were fun and inventive. And I’m a sucker for art references. There was some outfits I strongly disliked, because I felt they fell all the way into Halloween costume territory (I won’t name names, but you probably know who I’m talking about), but on the whole, it was an enjoyable parade of looks.
On a thematic level, I was disappointed. Quite apart from the Halloween costumes, I felt that most of the attendees missed the point of the year’s theme.
So, first of all, the Met Costume Institute’s current exhibition is called “Costume Art”. Per the Vogue cover story (May 2026 issue), the exhibition “sets art and fashion side by side – and erases any distinctions between the two.” The theme of the year’s Met Gala, which is a fundraiser for the Institute, was “Fashion is Art”. The Vogue article has a bunch of interviews with art and fashion people about the question of: is fashion art? I found it very interesting to read different perspectives on that, from both sides, but the key takeaway was that the Met’s overall message was that, yes, fashion is art. Not just a craft or a discipline, but capital-A Art.
This is what I think most of the Met Gala outfits missed. The majority were basically some version of a famous art piece (painting or sculpture seemed most popular) rendered in dress form. What this was giving was Art as Fashion, not Fashion is Art. These outfits centered other art as the art, and fashion as merely the medium of delivery. To put it differently, fashion was reduced to mere materiel.
Which is unfortunate, imo. As noted, I think the question “is fashion art” is a really interesting one and worth exploring. I think there are designers out there who have and do treat fashion as art – that is to say, as a mode of creative expression. I tend to agree with Tschabalala Self, who is quoted by Vogue as saying “[t]o me the separation between fashion and art is a false dichotomy. They’re both means of expression, and they’re both vehicles … that allow artists to express the concerns and desires of our time.” They go on to say, “when we dress, we all make a statement.”
This reminds me of what Charlie Porter writes in his book Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion (on which, more soon):
“… the clothes we put on each morning can lock us into acquiescence to the structures of power that we find so crushing. If we were to pay more attention to our thinking through clothing, we could begin to wriggle loose.”
Society has many ways of enforcing its structures and surveilling individual compliance, and clothing can be one of the ways that bodies, specifically, are subjected to that enforcement and surveillance. As Porter argues in his book, clothing is archetypal. Fashion as art is intimately about the body – more so than any other art form, perhaps, given that it is literally worn on the body. In this way, it is set apart from other art.
This is the piece that, on reflection, I think was missing from the Met Gala. By focusing so much on other art pieces, fashion’s essential relationship to the body was obscured, as well as its ability to communicate in a very unique and specific way ideas about our bodies’ existence in the world of today. You might be thinking: OK, but what’s the big deal? Ultimately, the Met Gala is just an excuse for rich people to parade in pretty clothes before the admiring eyes of the unwashed masses – right? [I say that tongue in cheek, but not really.] And on a certain level, that’s true. But it’s also an opportunity to hold a different, interesting public conversation about fashion and art – and by reducing fashion, once more, to frivolous fripperies, we are reinforcing the message that it’s irrelevant. Which, in turn, obscures the very issue that Porter highlighted: fashion is not frivolous. It is art and like all art can be used for good (self expression) and bad (aka propaganda and reinforcement of social structures).
Anyway, that’s my take on the Met Gala.
I would love to hear your thoughts.