Happy first Monday in May to all you celebrate! The Met Gala red carpet begins in mere hours and it is POURING RAIN as I type this in New York. That’s right, folks: we’re in for a Wet Gala. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this morning to see Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the exhibition celebrating Black dandies that tonight’s gala opens, and fans and photographers were already camped out across the street from the steps at 9 a.m. By the time I left around 11, the rain that was forecast to continue into the night had begun. Will the fans and paparazzi soak all day for the chance to glimpse the dandiest amongst us, sure to arrive as bone-dry as Anna Wintour’s bob thanks to a well-covered arrivals carpet? Probably!
This morning’s press preview was much more crowded than last year’s opening Sleeping Beauties, an homage to dead dresses. It was perhaps not as packed as the preview of the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition two years ago. It’s hard to believe that in just 2023 the great institution of the Met was celebrating a designer who once declared that Coco Chanel “was never ugly enough” to be a feminist, and this morning opened a show on Black fashion with a gorgeously dressed Colman Domingo recalling for the well-appointed crowd of Vogue editors and fashion heavyweights how his GQ-obsessed brother used to sew his own clothes, and that having style didn’t require a whole lot of money. This guy, he’s smoother than a properly steamed dress.
The exhibition itself was fascinating — one of the best I remember seeing at the Costume Institute — thanks to the well-curated historical depictions of Black dandies throughout. It including clothes worn by Frederick Douglass and personal effects of W.E.B. Du Bois, like his laundry list, along with contemporary glittery tailoring by Olivier Rousteing for Balmain. Here’s my quick recap of the show:
I hope you join Back Row’s live Met Gala chat tonight, beginning at 6 p.m. ET for paid subscribers. Let’s watch/endure the Vogue livestream together! (I will warn you, though, that no matter how late Rihanna shows up I am signing off at 8 p.m. She can’t fool me into enduring filler talk for an unnecessary extra 45 minutes the way she did in 2023!)
What are you looking forward to seeing tonight? Any last-minute predictions? Here are mine — add yours in the comments!
Despite the pouring rain, everyone will arrive dry, even those who are taking the fashionable approach of trying to look wet. Eva Chen, VP of fashion partnerships at Meta, told WSJ. that it takes 45 minutes to get from the nearby Mark Hotel to the arrivals carpet, because attendees are not allowed to arrive on foot. So all they’ll have to do is step from Escalade to tented carpet, minimizing exposure to any untoward weather. Dame Anna Wintour, who leaves no worry unworried, will probably have an army of assistants with hair dryers just in case a drop of rain assails one of her guests.
With a dress code of “tailored for you,” we’re going to see a lot of vesty/full-skirted things. Also, coat dresses and surely trench dresses. Why else would Burberry be getting so involved?
All those eighties-ish, big-shouldered suits we saw on the runways shan’t go to waste! Those Saint Laurent numbers would seem made for this moment but I bet some of that lace stuff gets an airing out, too.
Anna will wear Chanel by Matthieu Blazy. Anna usually wears Chanel couture and I could see her debuting Blazy’s work for the house tonight. But really, she can wear anything in her closet because she possesses the rare distinction of all of her clothes being tailored for her.
Last year, Gucci was notably absent from the Met Gala. Given its transition from Sabato de Sarno to Demna (who starts in July) and competing brand Louis Vuitton serving as a major sponsor, they seem likely to sit it out again.
Tom Ford will return to wearing Tom Ford. Remember last year when he wore Saint Laurent because, he said, Anthony Vaccarello makes beautiful clothes? He wasn’t wrong, but it was seen as a slap in the face to his successor at his namesake label, Peter Hawkings. Well now that Hawkings has been replaced with Haider Ackermann, maybe Ford will Ford it up once more.
See you in the chat at 6!
Don’t miss Back Row’s earlier Met Gala coverage:
