Taking Notes on Notes on "Camp": Met Gala 2019
Lady Gaga in her final look of her four part attire on the MET Gala 2019 carpet. Pictured with Brandon Maxwell.
“Camp is a part of who we are, not something we have to try to be.”
Each year, attendants and viewers anticipate the theme release of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual MET Gala. The 2019 theme is Camp: Notes on Fashion. However, compared to previous themes, this one entails confusion.
'Camp' references a tent, s'mores, and perhaps a wood-burning fire in colloquial language. Instead, the camp regarded in this theme reflects Susan Sontag's 1964 Notes on "Camp." The piece is ironic as it utilizes text to define the elusive concept that is camp.
Camp gravitates toward the grandeur—larger-than-life movements, commodities, and figures. Attendants are called to embody these definitions through their red carpet attire. Emily Ratajkowski and Lily Collins use this interpretation of camp, being 'larger than life figures' to commemorate former starlets Cher and Priscilla Presley. Others also took a literal approach wearing a copious amount of feathers, referencing Note 25 "three million feathers." Additional explanations of camp include the love for the unnatural and artificial. Finally, camp is ironic and celebrates humor. Camp captures complexity through dichotomies—unintentional/deliberate and trivial/serious.
Among these various camp descriptions, head curator of the MET Costume Institute Andrew Bolton also grapples with a definitive understanding. Andrew Bolton states that the exhibit informs while recognizing "you leave the exhibition still wondering what camp is." In a similar vein, the individuality in outfit choice reflects camp, including those straying from Sontag's definitions. Self-expression and creativity in their broad sense are categorically camp.
Lady Gaga, champion of camp and co-chair of the gala, plainly states, "Camp is a part of who we are, not something we have to try to be." Gaga perhaps contains a personal connection to camp, unabashedly celebrating individuality through clothing choices, performances, music, and the album Born This Way.
Through this exhibit, camp reminds individuals to embrace themselves and their contrived, exaggerated styles fully. Amongst the various definitions, the text and exhibition are a personal experience celebrating individuality and conception of self.
“The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.” Susan Sontag Note 41, Notes On “Camp” 1964
A Peek Inside Camp by Mehdi Lacoste
“Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation - not judgment.” Susan Sontag Note 55, Notes On “Camp” 1964
https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/inside-met-gala-2019-see-photos-by-mehdi-lacoste