Met Gala 2022: Everything you need to know about the ‘Gilded Glamour’ theme
5 min read
When celebrities hit the red carpet at the Met Gala on May 2, there will probably be no shortage of corset buns and bustle.
This is because the dress code for this year’s event, hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of the Arts Costume Institute, is “Guilded Glamor and White Tie”, referring to the glorious era of American fashion in the last decades of the 19th century. Industrialization rapidly increased fashion. The difference in the wealth of the country
“It’s very elegant, very exaggerated, very artificial,” fashion historian and curator Kate Strasden said in a video interview about the Guild Age style. “It simply came to our notice then.
House of Worth evening dress and ball gown, the first French couture salon to set up shop and influence American fashion from abroad. Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Guild Age was a 30-year period during which industrialists and real estate experts saw their fortunes rise to astonishing heights thanks to the rapid expansion of trains, factories and urban centers. Famous family names, including Frick, Astor, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt formed the country’s infrastructure, and socialists of the time, including Caroline Schermerhorn Astor and Alva Vanderbilt, ruled New York society.
Corsets have been on the red carpet for the past year, laying the groundwork for the Met Gala. Credit: Amy Susman / Getty Images
Status Symbols
During the Gold Age, you were what you wore, as Strasden noted, at a time when branding fashion houses was a new concept. Many American women at the time bought dresses to protect their status from Paris from Hewitt Couture’s pioneers: Charles Worth, Jack Dositt, Paul Poirier, and Madame Jean-Pakin. Show modern design.
According to Strasdin, American garment makers will not have a moment until World War I disrupted the supply of European goods to the United States.
“American women really have to travel there, so it’s the first sign of a lot of wealth – getting yourself there for real stuff,” she said. “Then it’s like being the ones influencing Instagram now – (women) will come back with clothes that people knew they bought in Paris.”
Alice Clapol Vanderbilt in her “Electric Light” gown (left) and Alva Vanderbilt in Vanderbilt Ball (right) in her “Venetian Renaissance Lady” dress. Credit: Jose Maria Mora (2)
“The gown itself had all kinds of jewelry designed to capture the light,” Strauss-Kahn said. “And then he had an electric flashlight that was really the latest. It went down in history as one of the most famous clothes of that era.”
Corset wars.
But even as the fashion pendulum leaned towards formal and wide, the underground aesthetic movement began to urge women to dispose of their corsets, retreating against the social conventions of the industrial age in the 1870s. Its bohemian female members donated loose-fitting “artistic” clothing to the public that was considered shocking for its association with undergarments. (Like Oscar Wilde, male aesthetics were despised for their so-called feminine rhetoric.)
HBO’s Gold Age Credit: Allison Cohen Rosa / HBO
Although the movement did not make major changes to the rules of public dress for women, these salutes reached the private homes of somewhat wealthy women. Enter into the romantic casual attire included in the “tea gown” – a broad prelude to the 2020 viral “nap dress” – although, according to Strasdin, many tea gowns are still “strong” under the clothes. Hide the bone bra. Adelaide Freak, wife of industrialist and art collector Henry Clay Freck, lives in The Freak, Pittsburgh.
“It’s an age that gives us a lot to experience, and a lot to gain and a lot to play,” he said.
The Golden Age of HBO Credit: Allison Cohen Rosa / HBO
Attendees at this year’s Met Gala may not imitate the style of a century and a half ago, but Strauss-Kahn finds today’s theme appropriate for its echo, which includes rich socialites (who use the Internet instead of steel factories). Make a fortune using it). Modernization of fashion houses.
“Approval for all jewelry … and it would be great to see a celebration of this kind of exaggeration,” he said. “And all the excitement of color and shape.”
“And maybe some crazy hats.”
Top Picture: A still image from Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film “The Age of Innocence” set during the Guild Age.