Though gifted with an incredible imagination, Federico Fellini couldn't have dreamt the red carpet procession that took place yesterday's evening in New York for the Met Gala. Yes, because Fellini's imagination was a colourful kaleidoscope that elevated reality to a beautiful, grotesque or surreal fantasy, but reality at times can become a distorted and dubious fantasy without the help of a director.
The Met Gala, the event that kicks off the yearly Costume Institute at the Met Museum exhibition, is a super exclusive night of the Oscars-like celebration organised to raise money for the Costume Institute (famous brands and companies can sponsor a table for thousands of dollars - around $275,000 - after Anna Wintour approves them obviously...).
This year's gala - for the ambitious "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" exhibition - had a "Sunday Best" dress code that in some cases took the worst out of the invited celebrities.
Rihanna triumphed in a pearl and crystal-embellished Martin Margiela Pope-inspired ensemble, complete with a mitre that was essentially a remix of John Galliano design for Christian Dior (Haute Couture 2001). Supreme priestess of the evening, Anna Wintour also opted for Papal white with a beaded gown by Chanel accessorised with a cross.
Katy Perry was a glorious angel in a Versace chainmail mini-dress and wings that did not allow her to sit or move, so she arrived standing in a top-down white convertible rather than flying.
Quite a few celebrities opted for the Virgin Mary look with ensembles reproducing a dress you may easily spot on statues in churches all over Italy, France or Spain.
Jeremy Scott at Moschino covered Cardi B in pearls and beads to rather questionable results; Sarah Jessica Parker in a Dolce & Gabbana oufit had a Nativity scene integrated in her bizarre headdress. Headpieces were actually pretty popular and included crowns, tiaras or halo-shaped decorative elements maybe hinting at the fact that, after celebrity status, the wearer had also achieve sainthood.
You can't beat Madonna when it comes to religious style: she "appeared" (pun intended) in a black gown with a see through cross on her torso, an ensemble designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, a master when it comes to religious references and transcultural mixes and matches.
Some of the guests tried monastic looks, among them Greta Gerwig who opted for a voluminous gown by The Row that reeked of Balenciaga and Valentino and evoked the habit of Dominican friars. Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent went instead for rocking nuns: he created hyper sexy risqué mini-dresses for a few guests (including Kate Moss) with a tiny amount of fabric, probably the same amount women would employ to make the veils they would wear to go to church in the '50s.
Surprisingly, Alessandro Michele, Lana Del Rey and Jared Leto weren't arrested after robbing a church right before going to the Gala as Michele's jacket incorporated the sort of embroideries you may find on sacred vestments, Leto donned a liturgical stole and Del Rey's dress featured a golden heart pierced by seven long daggers in the style of Our Lady of Sorrows and carried around a sort of metal mask with two eyes probably stolen from the from a reliquary of a martyred saint or from a statue of St. Lucy.
Zendaya opted instead for a homage to Joan of Arc, and Lena Waithe honoured the LGBTQ community clad in a rainbow cape by Carolina Herrera.
While echoing the rainbow vestments Jean-Charles de Castelbajac designed for World Youth Day in 1997, the cape was a critique to the more conservative positions of the Church and at the same time called to mind Pope Francis' 2013 "Who am I to judge?" remark to journalists asking him about priests with homosexual tendencies.
There were remarkable moments, though, and they included the Sistine Chapel Choir singing in the American Wing under a projection of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" and Father James Martin, a New York-based Jesuit priest and consultor to the Vatican's secretariat for communications, who went to the Met Gala dressed in his clerical clothes, attracting the attention of many trendy celebrities. He posted on Twitter some of the comments about his "attire" that ranged from "I love your costume" and "Is that, like, for real?" to "You look just like the real thing" and "I love that you got dressed up as a sexy priest." Amazing.
Also the museum spaces went through a Catholic extravaganza revamp: the tiara that belonged to Pope Pius IX and that is part of the exhibition inspired a gigantic panettone, pardon centre-piece, made of thousands of flowers (Fellini would have died for it...).
Frankly, the whole event was a bit too much, a sort of Catholic Carnival that makes you wonder if the items lent by the Vatican for the show may have become part of a Catholic Disneyland once they crossed the ocean.
Yet there was something very intriguing at the red carpet: everybody chose to be someone important - a Pope, a bishop, a priest, a saint or a holy supernatural being.
But there are so many nuances in the Catholic imagination and they could have inspired tailored tricks in the garments and more humble designs in coarse fabrics, attires that would have hinted at self-denial rather than at fame and celebrity and that would have aligned much better with Pope Francis' vision of the Church.
In this Carnival of majestic proportions, an unnecessary display of wealth that looked cringing in the face of global poverty and that was suspended between the excesses of Fellini's Roma and of Paolo Sorrentino's The Young Pope, one essential message from the Gospel went indeed lost: "Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
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