Tomorrow, the annual Met Gala will be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and attended by the most popular figures in pop culture today. But, the theme "Camp: Notes on Fashion" still has regular people like us wondering: what does "Camp" even mean?
No, sadly celebrities will not be rolling onto the red carpet in designer sleeping bags with their gold-platted s'mores ready, as "Camp" indicated much more than sleeping outside and looking at the stars. The exhibit is based on Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on 'Camp'", published in 1964, which defines the term extensively.
"Indeed the essence of Camp," Sontag says, "is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration."
The fashion hard to define but that is what draws many to it and all of the parody and nuance it suggests. Youtuber HauteLeMode's video "Met Gala Theme Explained" claims that this indescribable quality is part of the novelty, as demands to be taken seriously but cannot possible be so because of the over exaggerated qualities it possess. It seeks to mock everything it emulates, drawing new conclusions about what "art" is, or in this case, fashion.
The first example of "Camp" ever created was actually not just related to fashion or art, but to a whole city. Louis XIV turned the whole city of Versailles into a show of "camp" in the late 17th century. He would wear extravagant outfits and put on fantastical shows for all the nobility of France that were forced to watch.
He would even make them dress him in the morning and wait, without speaking, for him to finish the 28 course meals before they could start. This embodies the essence of "camp" because it is ridiculous that he made the most important and wealthy figures in all of France basically be his butlers, while still treating it all like it was the most important thing they could be doing.
The Met Museum itself describes it as "a love of the unnatural," as it plays with our whole perspective of what should or should not be taken seriously. Perhaps the whole goal is to say that nothing is to be taken seriously, including fashion.
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