The Cat's Ass

 

Jared Leto conjures the late Karl Lagerfeld's
cat and muse Choupette at the 2023 Met Gala 
Image: Getty

There is nothing new about celebrities making asses of themselves. This proclivity comes to a head every year on the first Monday in May.

Two years ago, at the height of Covid, I wrote what seems in retrospect a heavy-handed letter to our local paper saying it was time for longtime Vogue editrix Anna Wintour to make a fashionable exit from her own party. The Met Gala was no longer relevant, and it was time for serious-minded people to move on.

What a killjoy. At least, no one cared what I thought.

This sartorial Saturnalia would seem to be squarely in my wheelhouse. It involves vacuous people swimming in superficiality, my specialité. And yet, since two years ago, I have not been able to muster admiration for a gorgeous outfit or care enough to cast shade at a preposterous one.

Has the Met Gala gone from being the cat’s ass to merely an ass dressed as a cat?

Its various annual themes notwithstanding, the spectacle offers no real narrative. The purposeless pageantry shows us, ironically, what these natty nincompoops look like naked and unscripted. There is showmanship without storytelling, and in the absence of a beginning, middle, and end, we are left with so many cats chasing their tales. Only the undervalued Hollywood writers could save these asinine actors and puerile posers from themselves.

There are three kinds of fashion at play in the coverage of the Met Gala. One sees impeccable, drop-dead gorgeous looks that no normal person can afford -- works of art in their own right. Anna Wintour herself is the epitome of this glamour, and it is as unimpeachable as it is unattainable.

Then there are the attention grabs. Lady Gaga's camp apotheosis, Jared Leto carrying his own head, or prancing as the late Karl Lagerfeld’s feline muse Choupette, Janel Monae’s outré, outsized Thom Browne I-don’t-know-what-to-call-it  -- these are characters wearing costumes that provide evanescent, one-off entertainment. 

And in last place, there are the unadventurous, dreary dressers (like late-night snoozes James Corden and Seth Meyers) who opt to wear safe-but-boring Tom Ford or Gucci attire you might even find at a high-end gathering here in Cleveland. These cop-outs have no business showing up at the Met Gala.

Kim Kardashian in Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday Mr. President” dress last year was criminal in its own right, a blight on a legend’s memory.

But for all that, I am still unmoved by the Met Gala. It is not that I don’t care about fashion and dressing well -- I do. I spend an unreasonable amount of money on clothing and critique Joe’s outfits every time he leaves the house (Tuesday's got an A+). But even on an aspirational level, I feel disconnected from the first Monday in May.

For all my ennui, there are two people who seemed to relish the Met Gala coverage, devouring the YouTube stream from beginning to end. My adorable, sweet, hilarious niece Morgan, at the tender age of 17, is already an accomplished celebrity gawker just like her guncle. Often, when I go to follow a celebrity influencer on Instagram or the Chinese spyware app, I find that Morgan has gotten there first. She knows a thing or two about the famous, even if she did not realize Karl Lagerfeld was being honored posthumously.

Then there is her equally celebrity-savvy sister Sarah, who is headed for London's Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design this fall to begin a career trajectory in which she will conquer the world of style and eventually replace Anna Wintour. I myself once had the opportunity to work for Condé Nast in London, but a failure of nerve kept me in New York. Sarah is as fearless as she is spot-on in her assessment of all matters of taste. Like her sister, she loved this year’s Met Gala.

My young nieces find catnip in something that no longer makes me purr. My shifting preoccupations tell me I’ve aged out of the Met Gala to pursue kvetching full-time as a crank, prude, and iconoclast.

But if Sarah is ever in charge of the Met Gala guest list and gets me an invite, I’m there.

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NB: For a future installment of Vertes'Verities, I am asking readers to ask me anything! No question is off-limits. Go ahead -- you know you want to!