[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now that we've talked about the New York State budget, weather extremes from Alaska to Africa because of global warming, and deportation and un-deportation on today's show, we turn to end with this.

Last night was the first Monday in May for all of you fashion lovers out there. You know what that means. It was Met Gala night. With us now to talk about this year's theme for fashion's biggest event of the year, its controversies, the guest list, and more, is Vanessa Friedman, fashion director, and chief fashion critic at The New York Times. Hi, Vanessa. Welcome back to WNYC.

Vanessa Friedman: Hi, Brian. It's great to be with you as always.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this is one of those end-of-the-show call-ins that's for you as well. You can put on your fashion police hats. Who, in your opinion, belongs on the best-dressed list, and who's on your worst-dressed list? 212-433-WNYC. If you followed the Met Gala last night, were there any attendees that you think were outfits worthy of more discussion? We'll take questions about some of the wackier ones, the theme, or anything else relating to the Met Gala.

Have you ever had a fantasy, listeners of what you would wear? If you got to go, would it be to show off your taste and style, or be a political expression like some have come with, or anything else? Call in at 212-433-WNYC on the Met Gala. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Vanessa, I actually want to start with a basic. For people who don't even know what this is, what actually is the Met Gala? How is its theme decided upon each year?

Vanessa Friedman: Sure. Well, specifically, it is simply the opening party for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Blockbuster Exhibit of the year. It has been going on since Eleanor Lambert first created it in 1948, but it has grown over the last 20, 30 years into what the organizers would like to call the party of the year, the Oscars of the East Coast, the ultimate viral opportunity for red carpet entrances for pretty much any of our public figures, be they Hollywood celebrities, political celebrities, business celebrities, sport athletes, what have you.

It is an enormous fundraiser for the museum's Costume Institute, which is the only curatorial department in the museum that actually has to pay for itself, so it's pretty important.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Erick Adams famously attended last year's Met Gala donning a custom "End Gun Violence" tux.

Vanessa Friedman: He did.

Brian Lehrer: Was there anything like that, political like that yesterday?

Vanessa Friedman: No politics. At one point, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrived and dressed in "Tax the Rich" on the back in past years, but this time round, really no politics, which was interesting because the men that the party celebrated, the man that the exhibit is devoted to was Karl Lagerfeld, a designer who reigned over fashion for 65 years, worked at Chanel, Fendi, Khloe, as well as his own brand, and the early part of his career, Petra and Belma, and who was given to saying very, very sometimes offensive things, who sometimes made statements that were fatphobic, Islamophobic, once compared Angela Merkel to an anti-Semite.

I think we might have expected some form of protest about the museum choosing to honor him, but really, there was nothing. It was mostly a celebration of his work and his life and his clothes.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think he got that kind of a pass, given some of the comments that you just cited?

Vanessa Friedman: Well, I think we are perennially wrestling with the question of how do you separate or can you separate the person from the art. I think in this case, certainly the exhibit tried to do that. You can argue that they shouldn't, but they did try to do that.

He himself often contradicted his own statements, went back on them, subverted them, called himself a joke. He was kind of a slippery fish and hard to pin down sometimes. I think there was a feeling, at least among the people who were at the party, that the power of his work overshadows some of the statements that he made.

Brian Lehrer: Pierre in Queens is not having it. Pierre, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Pierre: Yes. I feel like so many people who came after Harvey Weinstein as problematic but did not come after Karl Lagerfeld. He was just as problematic to society. I think the Met Gala could have done better. I think more people should have stood up to a man that was not progressive when it came to societal norms, and pushing fashion forward in terms of being inclusive and being diverse. I thought overall, we could have done better.

Brian Lehrer: Pierre, is part of your critique here not just on the remarks that he's made that are considered fatphobic and Islamophobic and other things, but on the fashion that he produced?

Pierre: I thought he was a great designer, not a great person, so I felt like he should not have been celebrated to that degree. It always coming at some people.

Brian Lehrer: Pierre, thank you very much. 212-433-WNYC. For anyone else, 212-433-9692 on the fashion aspects, or the political aspects. You heard Pierre there, Vanessa. Are you surprised there wasn't more of that?

Vanessa Friedman: Well, there's quite a lot of the discussion, I think, about Lagerfeld and what he stood for going on in the bigger conversation. I do think there's a difference between criminal actions and offensive statements, and that may be a difference that is coming into play here. I think it's also true that Lagerfeld, over the course of his career, created some pretty extraordinary work, and that was the point of sale of what the exhibit is celebrating.

I think it could have done more to wrestle with the contradictions that he represented. It's too bad the exhibit didn't, but the curator, Andrew Bolton, was quite deliberate about that. He did consider it. In the end, he said he wanted to leave that to history and biography and have this exhibit really look at the product, the actual clothing products, fashion products that Lagerfeld created, and the connective tissue and what that meant to the industry and the lives of women.

Brian Lehrer: If the theme was Karl Lagerfeld fashion, what did that look like last night, and what are some aspects of everyday dressing that we can attribute to Karl Lagerfeld?

Vanessa Friedman: Well, I'm not sure when we started the red carpet had that much to do with everyday dressing. We sell a lot of vintage, a lot of vintage Chanel. Two of the co-hosts Dua Lipa and Penélope Cruz, both wore vintage Chanel dresses. Nicole Kidman wore the Chanel dress she actually wore in her 2004 mini-movie ad campaign, the one that Baz Luhrmann shot for the brand. We saw vintage Chloe that was remade, two dresses from the 1983 collection that were redone for Olivia Wilde and Vanessa Kirby, and more, and we saw vintage Fendi. I'm foreseeing vintage and old pieces reworn in big public occasions because I think it encourages all of us to shop our own closets and wear clothes again, and that is only a good thing.

We also saw a lot of Karl-isms, if you want to call it that. Lagerfeld had his own uniform that he wore pretty much every day and involved black jeans, black jacket, very high-collared white shirt, black fingerless gloves, black shades, a fan in his early career, and we saw that on a lot of the guests. There were a couple of Choupettes. Choupette was the Birman cat that was his very beloved pet. Jared Leto actually donned an entire Choupette outfit, [chuckles] I don't know, should you call it costume, which he then--

Brian Lehrer: Looking rather feline, right?

Vanessa Friedman: [unintelligible 00:09:31] then took off to reveal himself. It's a good thing he changed clothes, I think. Doja Cat, maybe because of her name, also wore a cat gown, as well as facial prosthetics. There were some kind of outrageous statements, but overall it was a much more elegant and understated Gala than we've seen in the past.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle in Orange County wants to disagree with our previous caller, Pierre. Michelle, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Michelle: Oh, hello. Thank you for taking my call. I think that Karl was a provocative person and he can be a little bit difficult to pin down. I think he is a lot of different adjectives, colorful, intelligent. He's, like I said, provocative, but he did have a diverse runway. He had women of all different ethnicities, colors from everywhere. Just because he did not include people who were bigger does not mean that he is not someone who promoted diversity within the fashion industry. I don't believe that you need to check every single box every single time in order to be somebody who is pro-woman. I think he really loved women, and he celebrated women, and he has a legacy of clothing that made women beautiful or allowed their beauty to show true, I should say.

I don't agree that he is such a horrific person that he should not be celebrated. There are a lot of people who have negative aspects to their personality but whose work or whose contribution to their industry or their field merits their celebration.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle, thank you very much. Two very different takes, Vanessa, from two different callers.

Vanessa Friedman: I think the other thing to remember about Karl is that he was very much a product of his time, and his thinking did evolve over time. Certainly, the diversity on the runways at the end of his life was dramatically different than it was 20 years before that. He said terrible things about people of bigger sizes, but then he also laterally embraced people of different sizes. I think he did evolve his thinking over time.

Brian Lehrer: We did see a protest outside the Met Gala as climate activists block Paris Hilton's car from arriving at the event. From what I've seen, a few attendees like indigenous model Quannah Chasinghorse, came dressed in protest of the theme because of Lagerfeld's controversial past. I'm curious. How did their outfits symbolize their protest?

Vanessa Friedman: Well, I think the protests were less about Lagerfeld than about the actual expense of the gala, the whole idea of the gala that people are spending millions and millions on this party when, in fact, there are enormous problems in the world in the sense that this is a egregious display of wealth and an inappropriate display of wealth. I'm sure that was a topic of conversation at the party itself.

Brian Lehrer: What about the color palette? You mentioned understated, and a lot of guests actually wore black and white as opposed to the color per se, right?

Vanessa Friedman: Almost entirely black and white, which were very much Lagerfeld's colors. There was a little pink, even though at one point I think he said that pink was not a color that anyone should wear. He did do pink in his [unintelligible 00:13:31] Chanel collections. There was a couple shots of red and some blue in honor of the cat, again, because Lagerfeld actually created a color that he named Choupette Blue in honor of his cat's eyes.

Brian Lehrer: Dee in Bergen County wants to continue the conversation the callers have been having. Dee, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Dee: Yes. Hi, Brian. Yes. You know what? I have been watching this Met Gala for many, many, many years, and I have to say, each year it gets worse and worse. Anna Wintour has just changed it into a Halloween party. It's become a freak show not only in terms of dress but also in terms of behavior. I think every time I see it, I keep thinking, "What would class acts like Jackie Kennedy think of this bizarre supposed gala?"

As a matter of fact, the themes have just gone by the wayside. People don't care about the themes. They just want to out-crass one another. Honest to goodness, you know what? I just think Anna Wintour should be replaced and somebody else with a little bit more class than her ought to take over and just revamp, revive, revisit this whole idea. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Dee, thank you for your call. Well, it's hard to get much harsher than that, although when she said people weren't on theme, you said almost everybody wore black and white. That was part of the Lagerfeld theme, but to her larger critique of the event?

Vanessa Friedman: I think the thing is you can't forget that this really is about funding the department in the museum that is not allowed to take part in the museum's own budget. It is in the interest of the Costume Institute at a very, very practical level to make as much money as possible. One of the ways you make money is by creating as big as marketable an event as possible. That is where the great costumey comes in.

I don't disagree that it is becoming absurd and very much about viral moments. I do think that's not necessarily about Anna Wintour. It's really about social media and the way our communications, culture, and society has evolved, but until they change the structure of the institution so that the Costume Institute can actually be part of the general budget, I think this is going to keep happening.

Brian Lehrer: Why is it that the Costume Institute doesn't get the other kinds of funding that the rest of the museum gets and needs to raise its own money?

Vanessa Friedman: Honestly, I think it goes back to the age-old question of is fashion art or is it something very frivolous that isn't quite serious enough to be considered worthy of the same treatment as old master paintings or great Greek and Roman sculpture, and I think the discomfort that a lot of major classic cultural institutions have with the idea of fashion in their halls.

On the one hand, I think in 2020, the museum reported that of their top 10 most visited shows ever, three were fashion shows including the most visited show ever, which was Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, and yet it still exists this discomfort with the idea that fashion should be part of the institution. I think that's actually the root of this. The fashion department is in the basement.

Brian Lehrer: In our last 20 seconds, it is a Lagerfeld show that's at the Custom Institute at the Met now. What would people see if they go?

Vanessa Friedman: It is. Actually, it's a fantastic show. It's designed by Tadao Ando, the architect, and it is not a formal retrospective, but a essay on the connective creative tissues of Lagerfeld's career and a display of 200 really dazzling dresses.

Brian Lehrer: Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic at The New York Times. Thanks, Vanessa.

Vanessa Friedman: Nice to talk to you as always.

Brian Lehrer: That's Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by MaryEileen Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our Daily Politics podcast, and we say goodbye today to intern Trinity Lopez who has been with us this whole school year and has contributed so much. Goodbye, Trinity. Good luck. Thanks for all you've done for the show.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.