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Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart. Yesterday was the 1st of May which means it was fashion's equivalent of the Super Bowl. The Met Gala last night, the exclusive invite-only event tightly controlled by Vogue's Anna Wintour. It's a spectacle of celebrity and sparkle and yes, access, and everyone who's anyone, at least anyone to Anna Wintour expects to be on, or at least wants to be on the guest list whether they say it or not.

All of this glamour does serve a purpose. Essentially, it's a potent fundraiser for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which aims to preserve fashion and history, fashion history throughout the ages. Joining us to talk about the night, the themes, who ruled the red carpet is Vanessa Friedman. She's the Chief fashion critic for the New York Times. Welcome back to the show, Vanessa.

Vanessa Friedman: Nice to be with you.

Tiffany Hanssen: The looks were intended to be inspired by the theme, The Garden of Time. Before we get into what we actually saw, what were you expecting to see?

Vanessa Friedman: I was expecting a lot of florals, and that did in fact turn out to be the case. I was hoping for a lot of vintage, inspired by the idea of time, that turned out to be not so much the case. I was interested to see if anyone actually read this short story that that theme derives from. It's actually the title of the Ballard short story from 1962, which I think is really about the death of the aristocracy, but I think only a few guests actually went that far.

Tiffany Hanssen: Who would those guests be that you think really took the assignment seriously?

Vanessa Friedman: Well, it seemed like Bad Bunny, who was one of the co-hosts and was dressed in Maison Margiela was maybe dressed to mimic the male character at the heart of the story who's a count. He looked count-like. He was carrying black flowers, back roses. I thought that actually the Balmain look worn by Tyla where she was dressed like the sand in an hourglass was a very imaginative interpretation of the theme.

Tiffany Hanssen: You mentioned Bad Bunny, one of the co-chairs. The other co-chairs were Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Hemsworth. What does that title actually mean, co-chair?

Vanessa Friedman: I think it really means you arrive first and you pose for a lot of pictures. In Zendaya's case, it also meant you re-arrived last since she made two entrances. She essentially opened and closed the red carpet in two different dresses.

Tiffany Hanssen: Tell us about those.

Vanessa Friedman: She started out in a Maison Margiela couture dress by John Galliano, which had been made for her and was very much aquatic and slightly not evil but tinged with the idea of another world. She had had some grapes on it. She looked very fantastical. Then her final dress was a Givenchy couture dress, also by John Galliano from his first couture collection when he arrived in Paris in 1996, which was the year Zendaya was born. With that one, she hit the time element very effectively.

Tiffany Hanssen: That was the black one, right?

Vanessa Friedman: That was the black one with the enormous train. It was inspired by I think Marchesa Casati. It was a very dramatic ancien regime look.

Tiffany Hanssen: With this beautiful headpiece that had, [crosstalk] yes, with all of the flowers and looked heavy.

Vanessa Friedman: That was by Philip Treacy, I believe for Alexander McQueen also vintage from 2007.

Tiffany Hanssen: She understood the vintage assignment.

Vanessa Friedman: She absolutely did and her image architect Law Roach who she works with. They've been always I think extremely creative in terms of dress, whether it's on a movie promotional tour as with Challengers or Dune 2 or on the steps of Met.

Tiffany Hanssen: Listeners, do you have strong feelings about the Met Gala? Did you watch the red carpet proceedings last night? Do you have a particular look that you love? One that you actually really didn't love so much. You can reach us by phone. You can also text us. 212-433-9692. Call or text. You can also reach us on social media @allofitwnyc. One of the looks that I would imagine we might get a text on Kim Kardashian. She had a look.

Vanessa Friedman: She had a waist. She had a waist that I think most people would not imagine ever existing in reality on any person. She has a very, very tiny waist.

Tiffany Hanssen: Explain what was happening there. That was extreme corseting is what our producer, Andrea called it. That was extreme.

Vanessa Friedman: It was very extreme. It was directly from again, a Margiela couture runway this time in January where John Galliano had cinched all his models, men and women into these crazy hourglass shapes through corseting. He had some pictures backstage on his mood board or back in the [unintelligible 00:05:50] his mood board of the process of creating these corsets and fitting them on bodies, and there was bruising on the models' bodies from this, but they had also been part of making it so for this insane slightly disturbing effect.

Tiffany Hanssen: Not to mention the little sweater thing she was wearing, but that's okay. Some of the looks this year actually are a little I would say toned down compared to some of the looks from past years, which some critics have said was more cosplay for rich people, which just looked completely over the top why are we doing this to ourselves looks? I'm wondering how you see the evolution from previous years to this year. Was that intentional?

Vanessa Friedman: I think restraint is a very funny word to use in terms of the Met Gala, which usually feels like the most unrestrained evening of the year at least in terms of dress, but certainly in comparison to recent galas, particularly pre-COVID galas, this was a restrained resting occasion. They were clothes that appeared on the red carpet before shows like Camp or Heavenly Bodies that truly have costuming to the greatest extent. Rihanna arrived as the pope. Katy Perry arrived as a chandelier. She then became a hamburger. Nicki Minaj came as like a vulva. There was a real question of whether we had reached peak dress-up and it was even possible to go farther. In a way, something of a reset was probably a good idea.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here. I am so over the naked looks. Did we see a lot of that last night?

Vanessa: We did see a fair number of naked looks. I feel like we always see a fair number of naked looks. The most striking to me was Rita Ora in essentially a Marni necklace of beads atop a body suit. We saw Doja Cat in a wet T-shirt dress that had been dosed. We saw Greta Lee in a sheer lace Loewe dress with a [unintelligible 00:08:23] piece that went up above her mouth to her nose. We saw Elle Fanning in what looked like a Saran wrap, Balmain Saran wrap. There is a certain amount of meme baiting that happens at the Met.

Tiffany Hanssen: The old Saran Wrap look.

Vanessa Friedman: It fits to want to wear. They wear it so we don't have to.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's right. Another text. Harris Reed and Demi, I guess Demi Moore we're talking about here, both and Harris Reed rarely see a designer walk in their own work as well as they did. Any comments on Harris Reed and Demi?

Vanessa Friedman: Demi was actually wearing a look that started with repurposed vintage wallpaper.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's right. I read that. That's right, which is, I'm not sure how that works.

Vanessa Friedman: It was interesting to mention. It had flowers on it. Harris was definitely trying to touch on both the idea of vintage and the idea of florals. They were a fantastically flamboyant pair.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, I don't want to leave without talking about the men. There were some predictably adventurous looks from folks that you might imagine. Let's talk a little bit about the men's looks that you liked.

Vanessa Friedman: Lil Nas X and Luar definitely made a statement. Colman Domingo in Willy Chavarria looked fantastic, I thought, but there was a lot of pretty relaxed dressing, whether you're talking about Donald Glover or Chris Hemsworth who showed up in a ivory colored tux, unbuttoned shirt and talked about being comfortable.

Tiffany Hanssen: I'm forgetting the name of the guy that was in Succession. Why can't I remember his name off the top of my head?

Vanessa Friedman: Jeremy.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you. Strong.

Vanessa Friedman: Jeremy Strong?

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. Jeremy Strong.

Vanessa Friedman: In Loro Piana, the brand that he made famous with Succession, the epitome of stealth wealth, and he apparently was still flying the flag.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right. I do want to bring our listeners quickly into the conversation here, Vanessa. Let's talk with Gina in Hell's Kitchen. Hi, Gina.

Gina: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. First of all, I love the Met. It is the Super Bowl for us costume people. My question is, when these invitees are invited, are they the ones that pay? Is this how they raise the money? Is it like, say, does Rihanna pay that fee?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good question.

Vanessa Friedman: Generally when celebrities attend the Met, they attend as guests of a brand and that means that the brand has bought the table and they are sitting at the table. They are free to donate to the Met and I think many of them do because this year we just learned the gala brought in a record $26 million.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow. All right. We have another question from a listener that I want to get to here. Janet in Brooklyn. Janet, good afternoon.

Janet: Good morning. I mean afternoon. I'm sorry.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's all right. I do it all the time.

Janet: I want to know there's no social media and do they walk around in these capes, in these high heels? After the Met, does anyone film them coming out of the Met in flats minus the cape?

Tiffany Hanssen: Vanessa, this is my question. Somebody stuck sitting behind the person with the twigs on their head?

Vanessa Friedman: Sometimes they keep it all on. Sometimes they take off a cape, sometimes they change. Certainly, they change for the after parties, or often they change for the after parties, but there's a lot of commitment to a look that happens at the Met.

Tiffany Hanssen: Right. Like Cardi B's, her skirt went on for days. I don't know. That took like ten people.

Vanessa Friedman: It took eight ushers to get her up the chairs. I cannot tell you what happened to the skirt once inside because as the listener said, once people go into the dinner, there is no social media and there is no reporting. What goes on in the dinner stays in the dinner.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, right, even with social media, that's sort of the case. I'm wondering just quickly before we go, this is a Meta question is Zendaya becoming the new Rihanna? Rihanna wasn't there.

Vanessa Friedman: Rihanna apparently was sick. There's a kind of ebb and flow and flux to who comes to the Met, who decides they're not coming to the Met anymore. It's a snapshot in a way of the people who shape our culture at a specific moment in time. I think there's no question that Zendaya is becoming one of those culture shapers.

Tiffany Hanssen: Our guest has been Vanessa Friedman. She's the New York Times chief fashion critic. We've been talking about, of course, the Met Gala from last night. Vanessa, thanks so much.

Vanessa Friedman: Thank you.

 

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