Met Gala 2015

This Tuesday (May 5th) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the annual Met Gala. It was formally called the Costume Institute Gala, but is best known as the Met Ball. It is one of the most important fashion events of the year, and its purpose is to be a fundraiser which benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Every year the Gala gathers the most important people from the arts, the business world and the fashion industry. The theme for this year’s event was “China: Through the Looking Glass”, which was influenced by the spring 2015 exhibit at the Costume Institute which is also dedicated to Chinese fashion.

Aside from the fundraising, the Met Ball is always a great opportunity for designers to present their take on the theme with cooperation from celebrities, who every year shock the public with more and more creative stylizations.

And this year’s guest list was full of big names: Rihanna, Beyonce and Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Julianne Moore, Katy Perry, Seth Meyers, James Corden, Harvey Weinstein, Jessica Chastain, Bradley Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Neil Patrick Harris, Anne Hathaway, Ethan Hawke, Dakota Johnson, Spike Jonze, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Baz Luhrmann, Sienna Miller, Carey Mulligan, Rita Ora, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Ivanka Trump, Florence Welch, Allison Williams, Reese Witherspoon, FKA Twigs and many others.

The full list of designers was: Christopher Bailey, Tory Burch, Sarah Burton, Georgina Chapman, Kenneth Cole, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Peter Copping, Francisco Costa, Domenico Dolce, Stefano Gabbana, Alber Elbaz, Alberta Ferretti, Tom Ford, Valentino Garavani, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Lazaro Hernandez, Carolina Herrera, Dee and Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Karl Lagerfeld, Derek Lam, Ralph Lauren, Jenna Lyons, Stella McCartney, Alasdhair Willis, Jack McCollough, Tamara Mellon, Gilles Mendel, Marcus Wainwright, Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Thakoon Panichgul, Zac Posen, Miuccia Prada, Raf Simons, Riccardo Tisci, Giambattista Valli, Dries Van Noten, Donatella Versace, Diane von Furstenberg, Alexander Wang, Vera Wang, David Neville, Jason Wu.

Meaning: creme de la creme.

Below you will find some of the looks many of which caused a lot of controversy.

(Let us know what you think about them in the comment section)

By:Magdalena Bury  

Organizer of the Met Gala

    Anna Wintour in Chanel

 

     

Amanda Seyfried in Givenchy Haute Couture                           Beyoncé in Givenchy

       

Mary Kate in vintage Dior &                                                                Selena Gomez in Vera Wang
Ashley Olsen in John Galliano

     

Sarah Jessica Parker in H&M gown &                                                    Justin Bieber in Balmain
Philip Treacy head piece

Sources:

Guest List

Met Gala

Vogue

The End of Trends

As we all know, fashion works on trends -what is to wear, what not to wear. Every season, designers,  from Saint Martins’ or Parsons’ new prodigies to well-established houses, present their view of the future. This is why ready-to-wear runways are everything you need to see to be in touch with what is going on in the fashion world. The designers are the leaders of the game, setting trends and creating clothes that will be copied from brands at the top of the pyramid to the bottom, made of mass-market brands.

However a shift of power has been going on lately. In fact, it has been going on for years, but it was hard to believe that it would become so big. Trends do not solely come from the runway twice a year anymore. They actually pop up every day and disappear almost as quickly. But who is responsible?

1) Designers

Well, it’s not actually their fault It has more to do with the evolution of fashionthat led luxury fashion houses to adopt a faster pace in their creation and multiply the number of collections and shows. Two ready-to-wear shows a year were not enough anymore and have been completed with pre-fall shows, cruise shows (a pre-season line), accessories lines. The velocity of the cycles of fashion has created a vicious circle in which trends only last a couple of weeks or days, creating an obligation to produce clothes and trends faster and faster, which nourishes the whole trend-creating system.

2) The Internet

social media, bloggers and other fashion-related websites. Bloggers today are almost as powerful as designers since they have the capacity to set trends themselves. With thousands of readers, bloggers such as The Fashion Guitar or Sincerely Jules, value and set some trends themselves, every day, on their blog. Social media, especially Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, are also resourceful websites to set trends: with their millions of users, there is no better way to promote something. Who needs a runway to dictate fashion rules now?

3) Stores

As the main shopping spots stores are the epicenter of this fast-fashion system. the mass-market brand stores, from Zara to Topshop, whose collections change every single day. New arrivals, new window displays, new ad campaigns… Everything needs to be new to get the consumer’s attention; a consumer who is now used to fashion’s fast pace and, as a consequence, gets bored very quickly.                The guideline for trends has never been so unclear and shopping options are endless. The media  keep up with  sartorial trends that are constantly being introduced in the fashion industry , because everything can be consider to be in in “vogue”: from casual chic to sportswear, from a 50’s or 70’s inspired wardrobe to normcore style, from  head-to-toe black to pastel colors… The constant renewal of fashion seems to have killed trends themselves.

However, fashion is still out there and it is still vibrant. If all of this can make us realize something, it is that fashion is actually not all about trends, but is more something about both a personal and collective present: how fashion reflects our current needs and aspirations as a society and how one, as an individual, approaches the overwhelming existence of fashion.

By:Charlene Vinh

Sources:

TheTimes