What Can The Met Gala Teach Us About Dressing Well?
Other than the perils of a themed party ..
Every year, the Met Gala red carpet is a feather-filled, boobs and booty laden, flamboyant, fabulous hot mess. Though the spectacle is the point and the sensational looks are fun, we hold our breath as typically flawless celebrities veer into the gown wilderness while their peers cast around, adrift in a sea of capes, boas, cages, or nothing at all. Did we like Teyana Taylor’s head-to-toe silver fringe and Bad Bunny’s prosthetics, or did they annoy us? It’s hard to decide, because of all the red carpets, the Met is the most difficult to judge – but why?
I empathize with the Met Gala stylist — I’ve been a Met Gala stylist. She has two jobs: get your client on the Vogue Best Dressed List, and make sure your client is still some version of herself on the carpet. She has to do this despite the theme constraints (Costume Art?), political constraints (attendees and designers are matched), and an audience problem (it’s a fashion event with the attention of the Oscars). This is shaky ground upon which to style, and it creates a crisis of authenticity, making it almost impossible for guests to cogently dress for their audience and for themselves. Even when a look is intentionally extra, without authenticity, it will almost never work.
“Authenticity” has become trite, draped in the aesthetic of reality television and social media: coarse, brash, and performatively emotional. But authenticity has no fixed expression. It can be worn by the extroverted and temperamentally reserved alike, and fetchingly so. The stylist’s job is to construct a look that meets the occasion but tells the audience something selective and true about who that person is. What I and my colleague, executive coach Erin Lee, call the Four A’s — awareness, audience, authenticity, and alignment — are what she is balancing. The best styling relationships are forged over years, where the stylist becomes adept at reading both her client and the room, bringing a truthful version of her to the fore.
What is clothing for? Aside from our base need for warmth and protection, clothing is a social act. It is bidirectional, communicating about us to others, and acting upon us, delivering comfort or inflicting distraction through silhouette, fabric, and the degree of exposure to the body underneath. When we meet someone for the first time, we are trying to assess whether this person is a friend or foe; can they be trusted? Among the many signals exchanged between two people as they forge bonds, dress is one. And the sense that their clothing is a costume, especially in a situation where dress is amplified like a red carpet, makes us flinch.
Of course, whether it’s the Met red carpet, the Oscars or the office, grading authenticity is gendered. The most hostile debates around red carpet appearances are almost always directed at women, and in the workplace, female workers and leaders must traverse a perilously narrow path between the valleys of too soft and unreliable and too harsh and untrustworthy. If authenticity depends on audience alignment, and audiences judge women inconsistently, then authenticity is structurally harder for women. For a stylist to glibly advise, “just be authentic” would be to ignore the different standards of authenticity applied to men and women. The trope of the witch woman persists. And the purveyors of that trope are usually somewhere in our audience. Considering audience when we construct our social selves through dress isn’t to acquiesce to misogyny’s demands. It is to acknowledge its presence and make a choice about how to respond.
Truth in dress, though, is not just for the red carpet. As in fiction it is so with dress: an audience will go anywhere with you when they believe you. When Lady Gaga performs at the Grammys wearing a black wicker basket, red-lashed, with a feathered bolero, it is outrageous but we believe her, “YES!” we say, “What else would she wear but a basket?! I love it!” Lady Gaga’s wardrobe would of course be completely absurd on Tracy Chapman, who looked resplendent performing at the 2024 Grammys in her blue jeans and black button down shirt. Authenticity can manifest as sequins or blue jeans. On the red carpet and at the office.
So I enjoy the first Monday in May, gawking and judging the looks designers and glam teams worked so hard to assemble. But what I’m really listening for is that flicker of coherence — the sense that the person and the performance match. When they do, even the most outlandish look lands. When they don’t, no amount of spectacle can save it. What we’re reacting to isn’t just the clothes. It’s whether we believe the person inside them.