The Met Does Punk Fashion

When I read this year’s Met Costume Institute’s Exhibition title, I pictured a gaggle of celebrities and Vogue editors in Swarovksi studded safety pins and clip-in pink hair extensions made of mink and just about died. Punk is, of course, utterly antithetical to everything Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art represent. Punk is accessible; punk is messy, and as soon as you figure out what punk is, punk changes. Last night’s Met Gala, the exhibit’s formal opening, is an event catering to celebrity and commercial success, a party thrown by wealthy people for wealthy people. And the idea is to bring together the world’s most potent and influential shiny people. This year’s exhibition title: “Punk: Chaos to Couture.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the suits that run it are certainly not the first to conflate Punk with Fashion. (That would be Vivienne Westwood) The irony doesn’t lie in having punk – the music, the culture, the anti-politics – boiled down to an aesthetic. The irony is that The Met IS the Man. Last year, they pared down Andy Warhol’s oeuvre and influence to a bland timeline of aesthetic similarities, so the teenager in me can only feel mother-bear protective of letting a bunch of rich, older adults curate angst.

EDIT: Polyvore, live-tweeting the red carpet, just posted: “Vivienne Westwood IS #punk. No one should ever cut her off, especially not at the #MetGala when she’s trying to talk :(“

I had to pause when I saw that they had cut off Vivienne Westwood. 

I’m not a teenager anymore, so I have to examine why my misgivings give me misgivings. One, as pointed out sublimely in Kate Carraway’s “Obsessed” for VICE, is that I was never punk. Operation Ivy, Minor Threat, and Black Flag taught me how to become a human being at a formative age. I had many feelings and no place to go, but I stayed in school, became the dance team captain, and loved my parents without breaking bones. So why does the adoption of a movement, created nearly 2 decades before I was conceived, perfected a single decade before I was born, and revived? At the same time, I was in kindergarten with the rich and famous. Do you feel so sacrilegious?

Nitsuh Abebe of New York Magazine explains. In “This Is Punk?” from April 29, he calls punk a “super word” (a term coined by Frank Kogan.) A super word’s primary function is to spark debate over the word’s meaning. So, a super word is the most punk rock of all the words. I’ve been furiously texting my most punk rock friend over the past 2 weeks (after explaining what the Met Costume Institute is and why The Met Gala is a huge deal. He’s so punk he doesn’t even know!) I realized we are guilty of bastardizing the stuff just as much as those who commodify it as an aesthetic ideal. Punk is anti-upper echelon, so what good is it to boil it down to a single philosophy? It is no longer in keeping with punk’s pinkness than Sarah Jessica Parker’s mohawk-style headpiece by Philip Treacy. But that’s sort of the beauty of punk’s legacy. We all genuinely believe that it belongs to us. To ME.

Hamish Bowles of Vogue made a case for the exhibit in the same New York Magazine via a short interview with Amy Larocca. He says, “Designers now look to punk, but it can’t ever be that visceral and potent. It will only be nostalgia for the imagery of the moment, which is very potent itself.” Punk was built to die. It’s a lesson in self-destruction. Yet, as musical and aesthetic movements go, it has the most staying power. It is iconic in its imagery, idols, and every iteration. Punk is a super word, providing a constant source of contention among scholars and fans. That’s a powerful idea. And it got me wondering, is it the most punk rock thing ever for Anna Wintour to throw a party celebrating the movement’s death at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Pretty much.