Yes, that's a cat on tHe carpet: THe 2023 met gala

Written Cal Taggart
Published by Cal Taggart

Catching up with Cal by reading Cal’s Corner? I can’t condemn that. This week we are going to be diving into possibly one of my favorite times of the year: the Met Gala. I think my love for this event is very justifiable as so many amazing outfits, great memes, and simply just entertaining talking points come from this one night. If you missed this year’s theme, or live under a rock (sorry not sorry), it happened to be “in honor of Karl”. Karl Lagerfeld simply put is a major power house in the fashion industry being the senior advisor of Chanel and having a big influence on other houses like Balmain and Chloe. He passed away in 2019 so Anna Wintour decided to theme this year’s Gala to remember and honor his legacy. Overall this year I think had some major hits, and of course some misses, and was a great improvement from the not so well received Met Gala of 2022: In America: An Anthology of Fashion.
“Are you going to talk about the cats?” Rachel Poulton asked me as I told her about this article. And the answer is of course I am. Karl had a cat named Choupette who acclaimed much spotlight on this year’s carpet. Both Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, and Jared Leto dressed up in their recreation of this famous feline. In my opinion only Doja Cat, fittingly so, successfully created a good cat look. Both Nas’ and Leto’s looks would have been great years ago on the “Camp” theme but not this year. This year featured lots of black and white looks, many pearls, and over-accessorizing, which were all Karl’s signature. The “best look” of the night is obviously subjective but this year I think a clear front runner would have to be Anne Hathaway wearing Versace. “Her look was the perfect amount of done but not over the top, she looked stunning,” said Piper Sorey.
This year’s carpet, as most do, was not without its hints of controversy. Some of these controversies would be Blake Lively and Beyonce both not attending to many people’s sadness as well as Rihanna and ASAP Rocky arriving very, very fashionably late. But most notably would be the controversy of the theme of the carpet itself. Karl Lagerfeld, although extremely talented, was an extremely problematic man who throughout his years made a multitude of terrible comments. Deciding to honor him on the carpet brought up the age-old question of “How to separate the art from the artist”. I won’t add any personal commentary on that and let you form decisions on your own. Overall I would say this carpet was a success and I look forward to seeing what goes down next year.

​​Published 5/9/23

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