The Met Gala Is Back, American Style

Apr 30, 2021

The Met Gala has always taken place on American soil, and the event is finally getting an American-style makeover.

The Met Gala may have been cancelled last year because of COVID-19, but it’s coming back this year with a few minor changes.

The 2021 Met Gala will be split into two events—one being September 18, 2021, and the second being May 2, 2022 (I guess this is more of a 2021-2022 Met Gala?).

The first event in September will follow the theme In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, while the second event will follow the theme In America: An Anthology of Fashion.

Clearly, both events will be inspired by the American fashion scene though no rules have been made official by the Met Gala this early on.

What do I expect to see, you may ask?

American fashion is extremely informal. Sure, we have business wear for work settings and what not, but if you were to ask a European what they think of our fashion, they’d probably say our clothing choices are too comfortable and laid back.

My response to that is—I agree. Maybe it’s because I’m a college student, but the majority of the time, I see people sporting ripped jeans, flannels, and tennis shoes to class every day.

And I'd like the Met Gala to bank on that this year. A flannel is a staple to American culture—particularly to the south, where I’m from—and how cool would it be to see a high fashion take on it? (Maybe we can add some cowboy boots and a cowboy hat somewhere in that mix? I’m game).

I also mentioned denim, but mostly ripped denim. If there’s one thing I remember when I had an exchange student in one of my classes my first years at university, it was their comments on the American obsession with ripped jeans.

I think designers could pull from any era in American fashion and do something fun with it.

There's the counterculture era in the 60’s where the modern day “hippie” clothing came from.

There’s the 90’s hip hop era with parachute pants, oversized shirts, and bold patterns.

And you can even go as far back to the Roaring 20’s where there were flapper dresses and feather headpieces.

There’s so much to choose from when you look at the history and evolution of American fashion. Even today, we see differences in the way people dress who may have grown up in rural areas versus urban areas, and even regional differences from the south, north, and western parts of the United States.

I wish to see designers for the Met Gala take advantage of this opportunity to showcase that American fashion is more than just dressing casually, because this assumption doesn’t apply to all Americans.

Our aesthetic movements in fashion coincide with a lot of our social movements, from woman’s liberation to the protests the Vietnam war, and that’s always going to be something to celebrate.