The Met Gala took over media yesterday as celebrities displayed their most outrageous takes on this year’s theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion”. “Camp” in this use is about exaggeration, about artifice. My favorite explanation: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’” ALL THE FASHION, ALL THE JEWELRY, ALL THE … heads? Yup. Jared Leto, frontman of 30 Seconds to Mars (aka Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life), came decked out in a red ensemble covered in jewels carrying a replica of his own head. While not everyone got his play on the Gucci’s 2018 Milan fashion week display where models carried dummy versions of their noggins on the runway, it was a great tie-in. Leto is a man of many heads– I mean, hats. He’s a man of many hats. The actor, director, musician is also the face of Gucci Guilty Absolute. So the fake head kind of makes sense. Even though the event really isn’t about making sense. The Met Gala serves as an annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and a well-viewed stage for artists, designers, and entertainers to take wearable art to another level in a no holds barred atmosphere. The looks are usually over the top and that’s pretty much the whole point. Unlike fashion shows which blast new high fashion designs that then go on to influence streetwear, the Met Gala allows full artistic freedom inside the suggestion of a theme. So no need to get weirded out by people carrying their own heads. It’s just art.
