Sometimes a Met Gala theme is announced and my immediate thought is, “well, this one could go very wrong for some people,” and this certainly felt dangerous in terms of people culturally appropriating in pursuit of the theme; I remember, for example, being very concerned about what Katy Perry would try. (Katy ended up looking sort of wacky but not particularly offensive, as you’ll seen.) And here, we did have a lot of interesting (and largely reasonable) conversations about what was and was not appropriative over the course of our coverage of this; notably here with Sarah Jessica Parker, here with Grace Coddington, and here with Emma Roberts.
Having said that, I do think a (not misplaced!) concern about making a misstep here did mean that fewer celebrities went really thematically balls-out; many celebs simply wore red. I probably would have done the same, although I also think this was a missed opportunity to shine the spotlight on Chinese designers, or designers with a Chinese background. (The Met really does not do very well at highlighting non-famous designers, though. Maybe that will change in the future.) Let’s start our look back at this year’s gala with the people who did go big. Even just in terms of literal size of their outfit.
