Inside the Met Gala: Feathers, bling and ideas about ‘camp’

NEW YORK — The cocktail bar was shutting down, and guests were being encouraged to commence the elegant trek to dinner through the majestic halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I’d be even better if I had a drink.” The sartorial theme of this year’s gala was “camp"— not summer camp, but the aesthetic of camp and its influence on fashion, as explored in the museum’s new exhibit, “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” It wasn’t an easy theme to grasp; the instructions for guests were to dress with “studied triviality.” But while the results varied hugely — from Katy Perry dressing as an elaborate candlelit chandelier to Kanye West wearing a simple black jacket that cost about $40 — there were indeed some slam-dunk “camp” moments, and one was Collins. Celine Dion was a different kind of show girl, dressed in a supremely crafted creation by Oscar de la Renta’s Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, inspired by the 1941 movie “Ziegfeld Girl” starring Judy Garland Inside, Dion explored the exhibit along with her designers, and confessed that “even now, I honestly don’t really understand what camp is.” No matter: Garcia and Kim had done their research, resulting in a Vegas showgirl ensemble made of countless strands of silver-gold glass beads that took many thousands of man hours to construct, paired with a spiky feathered headpiece. Model Ashley Graham, attending her third Met Gala, laughingly confessed that she heard this year’s theme and thought: “Girl Scouts!” But she liked what she learned about camp. Other Broadway actors at the gala included the five leads from the Temptations musical “Ain’t Too Proud,” in black-and-white Thom Browne suits, and Santino Fontana, starring now in “Tootsie.” Fontana and his wife, actress Jessica Fontana, attending their first Met Gala, professed — like many — to some lingering confusion over the meaning of camp, without much help from “studied triviality.” But they seemed to know it when they saw it.