Stop Pretending the Met Gala Is About Fashion

I need to say something controversial: the Met Gala is embarrassing, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.

Not embarrassing in a fun way. Not even embarrassing in the way that all high fashion is a little embarrassing—the beautiful, ridiculous performative art of it. I mean embarrassing in the way of watching very rich people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on one night while fashion critics genuinely debate whether a certain billionaire "understood the theme."

The theme this year? Sure, fine, whatever it was. But here's what actually happened: celebrities showed up in expensive clothes designed by expensive designers, the internet lost its mind over a few of them, and we all collectively agreed to treat this like it was a meaningful cultural moment. It's not. It's a fundraiser that became a content machine that became the only fashion event anyone talks about.

The real problem isn't the excess—excess is kind of fashion's whole thing, and I'm not a scold about it. The problem is that we've collectively decided the Met Gala represents fashion innovation when most of what happens there is just "someone wore a very big thing." Remember when people acted shocked that a dress was impractical? Of course it's impractical. It cost more than a house. Impracticality is the point.

Meanwhile, actual fashion is happening everywhere else. Small designers are doing genuinely interesting work. Regional fashion weeks are experimenting with community-driven models. Artists are using textile and silhouette to say something that isn't just "I have access to Vogue's phone number." But we don't have a 47-page Vogue spread about that, so it doesn't exist to most people.

What really gets me is how the Met Gala has made "did they understand the brief?" the central question of fashion criticism. As if fashion's purpose is now to perform intellectual compliance with a theme. Fashion used to be about making something beautiful or provocative or true. Now it's about whether a dress "read" correctly on the internet.

I'm not calling for abolishing the Met—it raises money for a museum, and that's fine. But can we please stop treating it like it's the Sistine Chapel of fashion? Can we acknowledge that it's mostly famous people looking expensive, which is its own thing, but not THE thing? Can we maybe redirect some of that breathless energy toward designers who are actually experimenting with form, or working outside the celebrity-industrial complex?

Fashion is everywhere. It's wonderful and weird and happening in thrift stores and indie boutiques and on the street. But we've decided the only fashion that matters is the kind that costs more than a car and happens one night a year.

That's not fashion criticism. That's celebrity worship in an expensive gown.