Wanted: Elegance, Grace and Posture

You can browse the Internet to check out the many galleries linked to yesterday's Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit to launch the Charles James event and make up your own mind about gowns, dresses and suits.

One thing is for sure, though: these can be beautiful and famous people in uniquely expensive Haute Couture gowns and yet quite often you get the impression there is something missing.

It could be the fault of perilously high heeled shoes that put the wearer at risk of tumbling in front of the photographers, or of the suffocating frothy masses of pastel tulle; or maybe it's all to do with the extreme low cut gowns, supposedly sensual thigh-slash dresses and random tattoos scattered here and there on beautiful bodies. There was absolutely something missing in the halo of blandness that surrounded Kirsten Dunst and Shailene Woodley in Rodarte, not to mention poor Lupita Nyong'o in a beaded and feathered Great Gatsby-meets-a bird of Paradise Prada dress, or Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka obtaining in their extremely cropped jacket with extremely long tails a sort of International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo effect (hang on, maybe circus festivals could be a new venture for Thom Browne…).

The more you stare at the galleries, the more you look at the best and worst (if you have the time and will to waste your time in this futile exercise…), at fancy hairstyles and plastic smiles, the more you realise something is desperately missing here – elegance, grace and posture.

In fact this could be the theme for the next Met exhibition: "Elegance, Grace and Posture Through Times (and How We Lost Them in Favour of Expensive Designer Clothes That make You Look Ridiculous)". They should remember though to organise the gala after the opening of the exhibition – maybe in this way the guests would finally be able to learn some extremely useful notions about looking good.