There was extravagance and a great sense of elation on yesterday's red carpet for the annual Met Gala fundraiser event. It was perfectly understandable as the theme of The Met's Costume Institute's spring exhibition is "Camp: Notes on Fashion", inspired by Susan Sontag's 1964 essay "Notes On Camp".
Lists of best and worst dressed celebrities accompanied by funny memes have been all over the Internet for a few hours already and there were a few stars who made quite an entrance.
Billy Porter channelled Cleopatra in a super-sparkling golden winged costume, while Jared Leto, dressed in a red silk gown covered in diamonds, carried a replica of his own severed head.
Though he was channelling Gucci's A/W 2018 runway show, in a way his outfit also hinted at the duplicity behind the "camp" theme.
Ezra Miller also did quite well: known for taking many risks on red carpets and always managing to nail looks and moods, he opted for a Burberry pin-striped suit covered with a diamond encrusted corset and matched with a grand white cape attached to the suit.
He also carried a blank mask and teased the photographers for a while until he revealed what was underneath – five eyeballs that created an amazing optical illusion.
Yet there was one piece that stole the scene and that was the result of pure technical prowess – Iris van Herpen's cape for Jordan Roth.
The American producer and president of five theaters in Broadway arrived in a dark red cape. The colour looked consistent with the outfit Roth donned at last year's Met Gala.
Then he opened it using two sticks hidden under the cape and the fabric revealed a giant print showing the interior of a theatre with Roth on stage recreating Loïe Fuller's iconic "Serpentine Dance".
Van Herpen and Roth worked together on the piece during the past two months. The main inspiration was the theatre with its curtain closed and open and, to create this effect, Van Herpen came up with a double-layer cape. The top layer in cotton and Mylar features an image of red curtains and it is laser-cut (the concept was already featured in her S/S 2019 Haute Couture collection with architect Philip Beesley).
When the cape opens up the cuts reveal the image underneath with a 360° theatre combining photos of Paris's Palais Garnier, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Royal Opera in Stockholm, by photographer David Leventi.
The result was a pure performance: Roth seemed to love it even during the fittings (on Van Herpen's Instagram account there's a video showing his surprise as he tries it on) and the multi-layered optical illusion worked incredibly well on the red carpet.
This was the first time that the Dutch designer created a men's couture look and hopefully it won't be the last one.
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