An Analysis of the Met Gala's 2019 Camp Theme From a True Camper
On October 9, 2018, Vogue announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s Spring 2019 exhibition would be “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”
Immediately after hearing about the exhibition, my mind went to my definition of camp: sleepaway camp. Summer camp defines my childhood; I spent every summer at the same camp from age 8 to 16. I look back on my memories as pure bliss, moments where I was entrenched in a place detached from the real world and could be my utmost self. For example, on color war, we dressed up in our team colors to compete in sports, such as soccer and field hockey. We would wear tutus, wigs, suspenders, sequins, costumes and anything you could find supporting your team’s two colors. In most other ordinary settings outside of camp, wearing such extravagant and random outfits makes no sense, especially for playing sports. Through these opportunities, I channeled parts of my personality I could not usually expose at home.
Camp was a pseudo-world that mirrored parts of my everyday with its morals and activities but also had a life of its own with its traditions and norms; everyone apart of my camp believed so genuinely in this made-up lifestyle that it became a crucial part of campers’ identities.
But let’s back up to the Met Costume Exhibit – How would the theme be about camp? Would it be centered on outdoor, hiking-styled clothing? Would it look at the clothing campers wear at different types of camps?
The Met Gala’s definition of camp, however, refers to the adjective – not the noun. This form of camp means “deliberately exaggerated [….] ostentatiously and extravagantly effeminate,” according to New Oxford American Dictionary. Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Met Costume Exhibit, found the inspiration for the theme from an essay written in 1964 by American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher and political activist Susan Sontag. While the part of speech may differ, my understanding of camp does not fall far from artistic camp; both pose the unnatural as natural.
Sontag’s writes about camp as a sensibility to frame it as an emotional and ineffable aestheticism.
“Most people think of sensibility or taste as the realm of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious attractions, mainly sensual. that have not been brought under the sovereignty of reason,” says Sontag in her essay.
“[Camp] is the love of the exaggerated, the “off,” of things-being-what-they-are-not,” said Sontag. Camp as a way of visually thinking draws off of innocence. It’s naive in that “the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails […].” Instead, it’s playful and “serious about the frivolous.” Most importantly, Sontag declares that camp is judgment free and revolves around love and character.
In order to better visualize the term, Sontag writes that a woman in a dress made of three million feathers, Oscar Wilde and certain Art Nouveau objects, such as the Paris Metro entrances designed by Hector Guimard, embody camp. Much furniture and decor are also camp, which might mean the exhibit will showcase tables, chairs and lamps.
In my opinion, Moschino’s Spring 2019 read-to-wear show in Paris this past September demonstrates camp fashion in action. Jeremy Scott’s looks are all white with marker look squiggles, lines and patterns reminiscent of your childhood doodle days. Some of the models also wear stockings with black marker squiggles on it. The amplification of Scott’s sketches onto the outfits manifests camp sensibility in their fun and dramatized nature.
Bolton chose this theme for the Met Gala because he “felt it would have a lot of cultural resonance” due to the current cultural and political climate. While Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele sees camp as the “the unique ability of combining high art and pop culture,” according to Vogue, designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano and Thom Browne exemplify camp in fashion, and according to Bolton, “Chanel was camp as a person but her clothes weren’t camp.”
So how will an exhibit encompass this sensibility? How will a museum exhibit in its institutional, seriousness capture camp aesthetic?
The answer: we will have to wait until May 2019 when the exhibition opens…the countdown begins.
