The 2019 Met Gala takes place in New York City, and by now you should have heard that the theme for the annual event is ‘camp.’ You might be thinking of roasting marshmallows, heavy jackets, thick sleeping bags, and tents under the stars. As cool as that might be to see your favorite celebrities on the red carpet looking as if they might take a hike, that is not the definition of camp the Met Gala is looking for.
Camp actually means something quite different. Inspired by a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag, an activist, titled Notes on Camp, the Met Gala camp theme follows “the love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” The event, led by the iconic Anna Wintour, and underwritten by Gucci, also holds a couple of co-chairs that perfectly fit what camp means: flamboyant, theatrical, ostentatious. Serena Williams, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, and Alessandro Michele (Gucci’s creative director) are the chosen co-chairs of the Gala, and we all know Gaga and Styles perfectly fit into that theme of campiness.
After the amazing reviews of Gaga in A Star is Born, her reveal as a co-chair for the event could not have come at a better time. The Met Gala is almost promised at this point to be amazing, and we cannot wait to see what she comes up with. If you want a visual representation of what camp means, just look at Lady Gaga’s outfits. We can never forget the head turning meat dress, or the lavender princess wire gown she wore to the Grammy’s, accompanied with the yellow-y blonde wig and crazy glitter heels. Almost everything Gaga wears seems to have a campy feel, with over the top accessories, crazy colors, and insanely tall heels.
Only just a few weeks ago, Gucci released their newest tailoring campaign with Harry Styles, one of Gucci’s most favorite customers (just look at all his custom suits!). The campaign featured Styles in some incredibly detailed, colorful shirts, and bold prints, which definitely had a campy feel to them. Fellow co-chair Alessandro Michele has tailored countless suits for Styles’, and the two have been working together on his two campaigns. Styles’ outfits have been screaming camp since almost 2014, when he wore the black and white floral printed suit to the AMA’s while his former bandmates showed up in classic dark suits. Ever since, he has rocked wild glitter, extreme florals, and extravagant prints and colors in his outfits. Gaga and him seem to have to camp theme pinned down, and it will be so exciting to see what they wear to the Gala.
Serena Williams, on the other hand, is generally more conservative when it comes to her fashion choices. While none of her outfits relatively express a sense of campiness, being a host of the Met Gala is a honor and it will be interesting to see how the tennis star interprets the theme alongside her co-chairs.
Although the event is months away, fashion forecasting is looking years ahead. After last year’s Met Gala theme of heavenly bodies, we have seen a lot of ornate detail and faintly religious accessories (check out Harry’s cross necklaces in the Gucci campaign, for example) in the fashion world. Camp becomes camp when a look is so awful, it is then great. Will fashion follow the theme of this year’s Gala? Will we see more extravagant, exaggerated looks on the runways, or on the streets? It is always exciting to think about the future of fashion and the impact that events and collections can have on the whole world.