Met Gala’s flowery theme went all over the place – FBC News

(Source: AP News)

Who won the Met Gala? Nature and its many flowers, together with some distant princesses.

It was anyone’s guess how the celebrity crowd on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday during the annual fashion extravaganza would interpret the “Garden of Time” dress code, following last year’s very specific tribute to Karl Lagerfeld.

“I was pleasantly surprised by how many people seemed to really embrace the theme this year,” says Jonathan Evans, Esquire style director.

Granted, there was a lot of wiggle room in the word “garden,” he said, but “giving attendees low-hanging fruit, a pun absolutely intended, is a good way to encourage people to stop worrying and have a little more fun.” to do with things. .”

And go for it, they did it all with flora and fauna largely staying on track, with Lana Del Rey’s tree dress, complete with branches high overhead, being one of the exceptions.

It was a lame assignment, since the dress code is intended to foreshadow the museum’s Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” However, the sleeping beauties of the museum show are not Disney or ‘Wicked’ or any of those people at all. They’re some of the fragile items plucked from the institute’s fashion archive and ‘revived’ for the exhibition, but that didn’t stop more than a few on the A-list from offering moments of fairytale dressing.

“The nod to the fairy tale was a huge motif, with Lana Del Rey channeling ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and Brie Larson’s hourglass-inspired dress, but there was also an element of fantasy in nature via Zendaya’s transformation into a flapper- peacock, Demi Moore’s orchid-shaped floral dress and Nicole Kidman’s black swan ensemble,” said Madeline Hirsch, InStyle news director.

“Fantasy, romance and nature were brought together in many of the evening’s best looks, and the carpet turned out to be more visually cohesive than I expected,” she said.

Among the big dresses (Cardi B) and garden shots (Zendaya and many more), there were other floral moments that deserved their camera sun.

“Designer Christian Cowan and Sam Smith won the cutest couple in looks inspired by Oscar Wilde and the English rose.

Christian was in cream and Sam in black organza with matching oversized, metal-clad roses keeping both their jackets closed and our minds open,” said stylist and independent brand consultant Larry Curran.

And some stars did not forget the people who dressed, and in many cases organized them for the party that every year brings in most of the Costume Institute’s budget.

“Gigi Hadid gave her flowers to Thom Browne’s team by breathlessly thanking them on the red carpet for creating a one-of-a-kind stunner that contained approximately 3 million beads and took 5,000 hours to create,” Curran said. “Serving old Hollywood glamour, it was hard not to smile as she honored the oft-overlooked artisans who power the fashion industry, and she looked beautiful doing it.”

Loewe, one of the gala’s sponsors, made a big splash by dressing the mastermind of the evening, Anna Wintour, in a black coat decorated with flowers. There were other big wins for Loewe, but Zendaya delivered a double dose of fashion goodness under a different name.

In a rare twist, she walked twice, changing into a John Galliano Collection of Spring 1996 Givenchy Haute Couture look in black to close the carpet. The enormous dress, with a flower-filled hat by Alexander McQueen from 2007, came after she walked the bespoke Maison Margiela Artisanal, also by Galliano, as the evening’s co-chair.

“Zendaya would have been my best dressed just based on her first look. When she surprised everyone by changing, she not only won the night, but also earned a place in Met Gala history for her fashion double down,” said Andrea Lavinthal, People’s style and beauty director.

Tiffany Reid, senior vice president of fashion for Bustle, The Zoe Report, Nylon and more, praised Tyla’s Balmain look as a great example of the right theme.

“Tyla won the carpet, a true game in the garden of time,” she said of the contoured look of real sand. “The hourglass bag complimented the sand-covered dress and was the icing on the cake, not to mention the theatricality of her ‘walk’ on the carpet.”

Tyla’s team carried her up the stairs.

Fashion fans said Town & Country editor-in-chief Stellene Volandes probably didn’t care how well their favorites did in the theme. Take Zendaya, for example.

“She looked beautiful in two looks that touched on the theme of the evening and the exhibition, but even if she hadn’t, the people watching would still have been screaming her name,” Volandes said.

The theme ‘Garden of Time’ is inspired by an obscure short story by JG Ballard first published in 1962. It is about a Count and Countess who spend their days in a secluded villa surrounded by a garden as a horde of rabble approaches . He reverses time with the last of some magical flowers in the garden until the last bloom is picked and the crowd descends.

On one level, it wasn’t a bad match for the gala crowd that paraded in its finest floral displays as demonstrators against Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas attempted to march toward the museum. On another level it was just fashion.

“The problem with interpreting a theme based on a story about class struggle, the fragility of beauty and the inevitable ravages of time is that it requires someone to read it,” says Hal Rubenstein, a designer, founder and editor of InStyle and author from ‘Dressing the Part: The Most Stylish Television Shows.”

“Well, that didn’t happen. So, with rare exceptions, an impressive star-filled staircase featured a host of intricately embroidered and beaded gowns covered in flowers. As Miranda Priestly says in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’: ‘Flowers, for spring. Groundbreaking.’”

Bianca Betancourt, digital culture editor for Harper’s Bazaar, saw three major fashion themes throughout the evening: floral, vintage and plenty of gothic romance. That, she said, “meant that almost every guest felt like he was going to the most over-the-top tea party in the world.”

Zendaya’s look was darker than usual to add drama and theatrical emphasis, Betancourt said, and Cardi B’s enormous black tulle nearly swallowed up the entire carpet.

“Some guests, like Doja Cat, took a more conceptual route for the theme, choosing to wear a wet white T-shirt dress from Vetements, as cotton is the most popular and picked flower in the world. Tyla also played with the theme and opted for a sand-colored bodycast dress from Balmain, leaning into the concept of time and turning herself into a beautiful human hourglass,” she added.

Wintour saw pitfalls, telling Jenna Bush Hager on “Today” before the gala: “This exhibition broke my number one rule. When we came up with the title ‘Sleeping Beauties’ it was beautiful, poetic and romantic, but it could actually be many things.’

When she went to Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton for dress code advice, the conversation went like this:

“I said, ‘What are we going to tell people to wear this evening?’ And he said, ‘Well, what about ‘Garden of Time?’ So I fear that we have caused a lot of confusion, for which I sincerely apologize. I imagine we will see a lot of flowers.”

The ending is good, all is well, Anna.