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By Hannah Schmidt-Rees

The annual Met Gala is essentially the Super Bowl of the fashion industry. Only the best celebrities are invited to extravagantly dress up according to a theme that changes every year. The fashion is definitely over-the-top and for the fashion-lover that I am, the Met Gala is one of my favourite events of the entire year.

But what is the met gala exactly?

Established in 1946, the Met Gala is a fundraising event for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City. Held on the first Monday of May, as well as the opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibition, the event's theme reflects the exhibition, with celebrities wearing themed looks to the opening. The Met Gala begins with a cocktail hour, in which guests walk the red carpet and visit the new exhibition, as well as attending dinner and entertainment.

Starting as an event for New York's high society, it wasn't until Diana Vreeland (former Vogue editor-in-chief) became consultant of the Costume Institute in 1972, that the Met Gala became an elite, exclusive and glamourous event for celebrities. It was also Vreeland that introduced the yearly theme and the idea to hold the event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Invited celebrities are expected to dress according to the theme, some of which have previously been;

Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

Now considered the fashion industry's premier annual red carpet event, the Met Gala is the main source of funding for the Costume Institute, estimated to raise over $200 million in 2019. Currently overseen by Anna Wintour (Vogue's current editor-in-chief), the 2019 Met Gala theme is;

Camp: Notes on Fashion

But what is camp?

Traced back to the French verb 'se camper', which means to strike an exaggerated pose, camp is the "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration… style at the expense of content… the triumph of the epicene style."; Andrew Bolton on Susan Sontag's 1964 essay Notes on "Camp".

It's often difficult to pin it down in one definition, but camp embraces irony, parody, humour, the artificial, theatricality, excess, extravagance, exaggeration and nostalgia. Elton John and Cher are camp. Marlene Dietrich and Grace Jones are camp. Prince and David Bowie are camp. Gender is often played with and forgotten. Sexuality is embraced. Art is worn on the body. Being over-the-top is perfect.

However, camp is often seen through a 'white' lens, and its modern roots influenced by queer and trans people of colour is often forgotten. There's no doubt that camp fashion is heavily embraced by the queer and drag community, but that’s only half the story. Hip hop artists such as Lil Kim and Cam'ron were wearing camp outfits on red carpets in the 90s. Films such as B*A*P*S (Black American Princesses) (1997) and The Wiz (1978) are perfect examples of the merging of black culture and camp culture. Icons such as Rupaul and Josephine Baker are particularly well known in camp fashion as well, but are often replaced by white camp fashion icons. Both sides are equally important in the formation of modern camp fashion, and both should be known and admired.

"Camp tends to come during times of cultural instability.", a perfect way of capturing the zeitgeist of the time. Camp fashion is created in times of chaos and instability, as a form of escapism; to be humorous, ironic and theatrical.

The way camp fashion is created through an excessive re-imagination of the ordinary. Camp is finding everything normal and taking it to the abnormal. It's trashy, but in a good way, as fashion is at its best when its not taken too seriously.