Camp to me is how I would dress up if I was a little girl in my mom’s closet, if my mom was the costume designer for a broadway show consisting of the wild and party craving guests of a Gatsby party in the roaring 20s retire to an early morning Studio 54 flash mob starring Bette Midler and Dame Edna Everage. Extravagant. Fun. Never repeated. Completely unrealistic. A lifestyle that the majority of the world either laughs at, rolls their eyes at, or judge only because they know they couldn’t pull it off themselves. It is the perfect theme for the Met Gala, as it is debatably the one place guests absolutely have to attend feeling a mix of discomfort, excitement, and utter fantasy. I simply can’t wait to see this exhibit and how Alex Bolton the costume institute’s curator determined which pieces and which designers are worthy of such absurd creativity.
It’s not just the overall craziness. Sometimes it’s a color, textile, length/proportion, that makes something camp. (lady gaga only wore white, black, and pink as a co-chairwomen- it was her entrances, references, risks, and physical expressions and emotions that did the job.
