Still thinking about the 2019 Met Gala.

Despite the 2022 Gala right on the horizon, I am forever stuck in the hell that is 2019 Met Gala discourse. The theme was 'Camp: Notes on Fashion', and the outfits ranged from bland to outlandish, from wearing plain suits to having 4 costume changes (with an umbrella?!). "What is 'camp'?", we all exclaimed. 'Can I just look vaguely stereotypically gay?', they asked. 'Will some frills and a splash of pink work?', 'I thought it meant we were going camping?'

The word seemed to lose all meaning and everyone seemed to lose their minds. Take a step back, deep breaths, and lets reassess the theme.

'Camp: Notes on Fashion' is a clear reference to the 1964 essay by Susan Sontag- 'Notes on "Camp"'- in which she endeavoured to explore what it truly meant to deem something 'camp'. It's not every year that the Met Gala gives designers and celebrities a set text to base their outfits on, and seemingly this helping hand was refused by many. Even in colloquial understandings of 'camp' (that is, ones that do not adhere as stringently as Sontag as I will for the time being), there is a general acceptance that this term widely covers the outlandish, the comedic, and the stylized Aesthetic. And I'm not sure Harry Styles or Shawn Mendes (as much as I love them) could even pass this basic benchmark.

The main tenets of camp seem to be that it must be unapologetic, bold, and most importantly have a complete and blinding lack of self awareness. As Sontag puts it, 'even when it reveals self-parody, it reeks of self love', and that 'intending to be campy is always harmful'. That is, that camp shouldn't know it's camp, or try to be camp. So, the 2019 Met Gala was doomed. We can't blame any of these celebrities for being so charmingly bewildered at this theme, it was a trap! I like to imagine the organisers giggling to themselves while they tell the designers to try to be camp, knowing this to be inherently paradoxical. In trying too hard these outfits were destined for mediocrity, destined to be criticised by random teenage girls on the internet even 3 years later. Until one ex Victoria Secret model blew our collective socks off and found the ultimate loophole...

The stance. The stare. The sincerity. It was perfect. She wore that outfit, and she wore it with gusto. The public unanimously decided that hugely missed the theme. She barely even tried! And she was slated for it. One passionate Instagram commenter said 'Camp?? Participate in the theme or wear something worth wearing', and another went with a scathing tricolon of 'Ugly, no taste and married into a crime family'. Others were more minimalistic, simply stating 'MESS' or 'Underwhelming'. This outfit most likely went down as one of the worst, likely not helped by her tweet 'looking camp in the eye' (ignoring the fact that many men turned up in even lower effort outfits and nothing was said, but that is a can of worms that deserves more space than this parenthesis can offer).

But I would propose that this is, in fact, one of the greats. Move aside Lady Gaga and your 4 outfit costume change extravaganza, Karlie and her black bubble sleeves are strutting through. Karlie demonstrated what needed to be demonstrated- bold lack of self awareness. In wearing an outfit that barely touches the boundaries, let alone pushes them, and somehow looks awful on her, despite the fact that she is a literal supermodel, she achieved 'the ultimate camp statement: it's good because it's awful'.

Adamantly adhering to Sontag's camp bible, however, leaves no room for the malleability of language, and for the ways in which 'camp' may have changed. In my subtitle, and the whole segment on Ms Kloss, I boldly claimed that 'camp doesn't know it's camp', and that subtitle has sat there happily, unchallenged, for weeks. Until I saw one fateful TikTok that demolished that statement. After season 2 episode 7 of Euphoria, creator @nathanblonsky stated that the 'Holding out for a Hero' sequence in Lexi's play "postulated that camp can indeed be self-aware". And I couldn't help but agree. If you are unfamiliar with the scene (which is by far one of my favourites in the whole show), here it is.

This scene is camp, intentionally so. And its not mediocre, either. Lexi Howard tore apart Sontag's idea of camp being oblivious to itself, the dance sequence could not be more on the nose. So camp can be self aware? The Met Gala was not doomed? Maybe Karlie Kloss was not our lord and saviour? Maybe this entire essay, and the hours I have poured into it, has been backed into a corner and pinned down by a single Euphoria scene involving gold shorts and an 80s rock ballad? Maybe I have just been forced into admitting that there is no fresh angles on camp fashion- Lady Gaga did it right and Karlie Kloss did it wrong and Susan Sontag is rolling in her grave?! Maybe there is no fresh angles on anything, creativity is dead and we may as well give up now.

In conclusion, I cannot provide any authority on what looks were 'good' and 'bad'. I can hardly even provide a new lens to look at this travesty from. But I hope you enjoyed reminiscing how celebrities were menaces to society even before the pandemic, or at least enjoyed wasting a few minutes of your day. You're welcome.