The Fashion Industry every year looks forward to The First Monday in May as this is when the Met Gala is held. Every year, the event curated by Vogue Editor in Chief and Conde Nast Artistic Director Anna Wintour releases a theme where celebrities like Rihanna get the chance to dress up (with the help of Designers and Stylist) to best interpret this theme. Proceeds from the event go towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
This year’s Met Gala theme for 2019 is …..“Camp: Notes on Fashion,” which is a reference to writer Susan Sontag’s famous 1964 essay Notes on Camp.
What does this all Mean?
In a nutshell Notes on Camp is an essay written by Susan Sontag in 1964 which brought her intellectual notoriety. According to Susan
” The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”.
Today, we would describe Camp style as flamboyant or kitschy — bold, different and just owning your truth by way of Fashion. It could be Pop Camp, Political Camp, High Camp or even Queer Camp. It is a way of dress where something is considered appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value.
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Here are are few of Susan’s Jottings about Camp we found helpful:
- The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.
- The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
- Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of “style” over “content,” “aesthetics” over “morality,” of irony over tragedy.
- What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not Camp. Neither can anything be Camp that does not seem to spring from an irrepressible, a virtually uncontrolled sensibility. Without passion, one gets pseudo-Camp–what is merely decorative, safe, in a word, chic.
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The Gala will take place on May 6, which will serve as the kick-off to the exhibit. The show will have about 175 pieces from men’s and women’s wear, to sculpture, paintings, and drawings. Presented designers will include Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga, and Moschino.
There will be a red carpet event — however! The Gala itself is private and no cameras are allowed so we never get to see what goes on inside the Gala.
