Why the Met Gala Sucks Every Year: A Video Essay

the Met Gala happened almost a week ago now and while I know I'm tardy to the party on uploading a video about it I still wanted to take some time to talk about it this year the Met gala's theme honored Carl Lagerfeld and many were very upset by this Choice before I get into the specifics on that controversy I wanted to talk about the Met Gala in general what it is and why it started the Metropolitan Museum is an art museum in New York City it's a very well-known Museum and is known throughout the country and throughout the world the costume Institute is a curatorial department focused on fashion history and fashion artifacts that's housed within this Museum while the costume Institute is a part of the museum it's also treated as kind of its own separate thing in fact they're the only curatorial Department responsible for coming up with their own funding so that's where the Met Gala comes in at its start in 1948 the Met Gala was not the lavish event that we know today it was a much smaller event and tickets only cost fifty dollars it wasn't until the 1970s that major celebrity names started to attend and because of that the event began to gain a little bit of popularity this trend continued over the following decades and in 1995 Anna Wintour took control of the event for those of you that don't know Anna Wintour is the editor-in-chief at Vogue and she's been running the Met Gala ever since Anna is also primarily responsible for what the event looks like today so let's take a look at what the event looks like while a handful of individual tickets are available for the low low price of thirty thousand dollars most celebrities are invited to attend by a designer these designers purchase a table for close to 300 000 and they submit a list of celebrities that they would like to sponsor Anna Wintour makes the final call and decides the guest list so she has the power to deny celebrity requests and swap them with others if this happens the designer is still expected to pay for the table each year there's a different theme for the Met Gala and celebrities are expected to dress according to that theme the theme lines up with the costume institute's annual exhibition but this also has to be approved by Anna before anything moves forward this year the exhibition is called Carl Lagerfeld a line of beauty and featured work from the designer's entire career from the 1950s through his death in 2019. the exhibition also displays many of lagerfeld's sketches alongside his completed clothing this theme caused a lot of controversy because of Carl himself while widely regarded as a creative genius he had lots of bad takes throughout his career and he was very vocal about them he has a major history of racist islamophobic misogynistic and fat phobic comments throughout his career I mean it'll be okay for women to be fat in the future I'm afraid yes but not okay now no I'm not going to go into the specifics of these comments and the background behind each of them in the context because frankly I don't really know where to start and I feel like there's already content out there that kind of addresses that what I want to talk about is why I'm not really surprised that this happened plus it's really easy to argue that the Met is kind of problematic every year anyways some years like this one they're just a little bit more obvious about it with poor choice and theme but let's talk about some of the things that are consistently problematic year after year starting with the fashion industry the fashion industry is known for being full of excessive wealth waste unethical labor practices harmful body standards and manipulative advertising just to name a few the Met Gala is Guilty By Association and when you look a little bit closer many of these things present in the fashion industry are also present in this event I tried it on it didn't fit me and so I looked at them and I said give me like three weeks and I I had to lose 16 pounds down today at its core this event is advertising that is expertly disguised as entertainment while the garments that walk down the red carpet are handcrafted one-of-a-kind Unique Couture pieces that cost many thousands of dollars many of these designers have more affordable off the rack collections by dressing A-list celebrities that are bound to be somebody's favorite these designers drum up excitement about their brand name earlier I mentioned Anna Wintour and her connection to the event what's your favorite museum in New York City the Metropolitan Museum Anna has had her fair share of controversy as well people do not like her I know you've had your own and a Wintour run-in actually I've had I have had several really um and uh I I just will say that when people misbehave around me I call them out on their bad behavior if you've ever seen The Devil Wears Prada Meryl Streep's character Miranda Priestley is based off of Anna Wintour all right everyone gird your life specifically she's been spent for racist behavior and problematic management of Vogue magazine to give an example in 2017 she dressed model Carly Kloss as a geisha for a multi-page spread in the magazine she refused to pull the piece when she was warned of its insensitivity and published It Anyways in more recent years past employees have anonymously come forward to bring attention to the toxic work environments and a cultivates a Vogue her recent push for inclusivity and seemingly Progressive decision-making at Vogue have mostly been regarded as a calculated PR move rather than a sincere push for improvement past employees argue that she still consistently prioritizes white skinny and Rich above anything else because Anna Wintour is so notoriously problematic it is unsurprising that an event entirely under her control would be run as such not to mention Anna was besties with Carl so of course she would approve the this theme there is no one was no one like Carl even without considering the consistently unethical moves made by the fashion industry this event is still incredibly wasteful think about how much trash is produced by the end of the night and how much jet fuel was pumped into the air for all of these major names to be in attendance while the event regularly rakes in millions of dollars it is impossible to find information about how much of that money is actually going to the costume Institute and how much of it is just used to cover the cost of such an expensive event this is also not the first time the Met Gala has been hosted with a questionable theme in 2015 the theme was China through the Looking Glass it went exactly as you might expect there were many botched attempts at meeting the theme from a ton of different celebrities some look straight up referenced the wrong Asian countries and others were just straight up cultural appropriation Sarah Jessica Parker in particular took a lot of heat for this look right here on the flip side Rihanna was the only major celebrity wearing a gown designed by a Chinese designer I saw this beautiful piece on the internet I was looking through you know researching a Chinese Couture and it's made by gupe this is the Chinese how brilliant of you to do this thank you this year the Met Gala made an obvious misstep with their theme well I think there's a way to acknowledge someone's contributions to a field it's important to educate on the controversy behind the work as well the map failed to do that this year but that's also unsurprising to me the fashion industry regularly sweeps concerns like this under the rug and I believe this is because many luxury fashion brands run in unethical ways in one way or another by pointing fingers at someone behaving in a way that's similar they risk fingers being pointed back at themselves while I don't think there's a nursing wrong with watching the Met Gala year after year I do think it's important to be aware of what's going on beneath the surface it's an important part of media literacy to analyze the content you've consumed to find out what values truly lie behind it thank you for watching this video if you liked it give it a like And subscribe and don't forget to check out prettiest pair.com for more content and freebies I'll link down below

Channel: Prettiest Pear

Views: 47,052

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Id: 5ZZrHssgzH8

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2023