There has been too much talk about artistic director of Condé Nast and editor in chief of American Vogue Anna Wintour issuing the cryptic "White Tie and Decorations" dress code for tonight's Costume Institute gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will officially launch the Charles James exhibition.
In the last few days many publications have been providing us with information about this extravagant night out populated by hundreds of (more or less obnoxious) celebrities in ball gowns and gloves and top hats and tails (with medals - that's the "decorations" part).While the gala evening is financially important since it's first and foremost a funding event, deep down in our hearts, most of us really do not care about it (especially after considering the budget for a single ticket - $25,000).
So, as a reaction to all these gala shenanigans, let's have some fun by looking at a rather bizarre ball.
Inspired by the annual costume ball given at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the 1931 Beaux-Arts costume ball in New York made history since it featured a group of prominent male architects dressed as buildings. Wearing identical trousers and ziggurat-shaped tops but with scaled models of their famous buildings as headdresses, the architects reproduced the skyline of New York.
Among the others there were Leonard Schultze as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, William van Alen as the Chrysler Building, Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Building, Ralph Walker as the Wall Street Building, D.E.Ward as the Metropolitan Tower, Arthur J.Arwine as a low pressure heating boiler (well, you must provide some variation...), A. Stewart as the Fuller Building and Joseph Freelander as the award-winning Museum of the City of New York.
Phallic symbolism aside (considering that Miss Edna Cowan was dressed as a basin, symbolically representing the plumbing to the male architect's skyscrapers...), you can't beat William Van Alen as the Chrysler Building looking like a crossover between a conjurer out of a Ballets Russes production or on a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Dear Ms Wintour, it's time to take these gala balls less seriously and have some genuine fun instead.
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