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alyssaharad.bsky.social • 4 days ago

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Reposted from Wanted "Contact," Got "Don't Look Up"

1. No one pays for the clothes they wear to the Met Gala. They are loaned from the fashion house who extended the invitation.

2. The Costume Institute isn't funded by the Met. It's funded by the Gala.

3. The thread linked below.

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robware.bsky.social•4 days ago

And on this note, I am mortally offended that Bill Nighy wasn’t there with Anna Wintour. His fits are unrivaled

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

😆

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

I get how the splendor of the ball and its celebrities can chafe, but chopping off the heads of everyone there and burning all the haute couture ateliers to the ground would be less meaningful and less effective than forcing a single fast fashion brand to clean up its factories and pay fair wages.

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

These two things are not unrelated to each other. There is plenty—PLENTY—to critique about high fashion as both symbolic and material exploitation. But last night was a glorious performance by a lot of people who know and adore the art history they drew from and enjoying that is OK!

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

A lot of art—maybe most of it—depends on exploitation. For its material (someone is mining that marble, those pigments, someone picked the cotton that ended up in that paper) and for payment (the money paid to the artist has its origin in hard labor). High fashion is no different. And it is art.

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

I guess the flattest, most boring Marxist analysis would claim that last night was an exploitation of the people and history the theme drew from. That by turning the Black Dandy into a theme for the wealthy and famous one kills and buries The Dandy himself.

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

But y’all, making that argument means denying the history of a lot of the people who were in the room last night. And all of the joy, too.

alyssaharad.bsky.social•4 days ago

I could go on. No one has debated all the sides of the “is art bad actually” argument longer or in more boring detail than I have done or will continue to do with myself. But I’d rather go look at more photos of people paying glorious tribute to a history they embody.

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