HAPPY CAMPERS

This year’s Met Gala was the golden ticket to subversive style.

“The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.“ – Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

The Metropolitan Museum of Art rolled out the pink carpet for New York City’s finest annual fashion affair, The Met Gala, which benefits the Costume Institute at The Met. This year’s exhibition is an in-depth look into the social manifestation and origins of Camp.

Great. But what exactly is CAMP? Andrew Bolton, the Met’s Head Curator of the Costume Institute was inspired by author Susan Sontag’s first published essay in 1964 titled “Notes On Camp.” Using Sontag’s work as the springboard, Bolton built a tour-de-force exhibit on this singular sensation of style that extends beyond the sartorial to include interior design, objects, film, literature and art. Cool. But why is this relevant today? Camp isn’t just a trend or a fixation of freaky fashion folk or the purview of an artistic elite. Camp has established itself as a bonafide phenomenon of our current cultural state of affairs. It’s everywhere.

Camp in and of itself is an amalgamation of the artificial, the eccentric, the weird, the vulgar, and the odd. Whether it is the result of bad taste, good taste or no taste at all is up for grabs. As they say, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and the Camp is nothing if not a freeform, subjective joyride through the mind’s eye. Susan Sontag describes Camp as a style, a vision, a flamboyant sensibility and an ‘aesthetic experience of the world.’

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

BILLY PORTER SPREADS HIS WINGS IN A LOOK BY THE BLONDS

“What Camp taste responds to is “instant character” (this is of course, very 18th
century); and, conversely, what it is not stirred by is the sense of the development of
character. Character is understood as a state of continual incandescence
– a person being one, very intense thing.”
– Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

Still having trouble envisioning Camp? Think Bob Mackie’s outrageous beaded and feathered costumes for Cher or Elton John’s iconic look of sky-high jeweled platforms and saucer-sized spectacles in his heyday. David Bowie, Prince, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Liberace, and so many more iconic musicians have drawn inspiration from the divinely extravagant, creating iconic touchstones of kooky-kitschy style. And the film world is no different. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, any John Waters movie, and old films like Auntie Mame, Mommie Dearest and Barbarella are all perfect examples of Camp classics.

And not to be outdone, fashion’s fascination with this over-the-top artform runs deep. Just take a quick survey through this season’s (or any season really) runway collections from brands like Gucci, Thom Browne, Schiaparelli, Moschino, Mugler and Viktor & Rolf to name a few, or better yet, take a peek at some of our favorite red-carpet looks from the Met Gala event itself, gilded and glittering in our color of choice, gold.

“Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgment. Camp is
generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. Camp taste doesn’t
propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in
being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate
failures.” – Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

GOLDEN GIRL, RITA ORA IN MARC JACOBS

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

TRACEE ELLIS ROSS STRIKES A POSE IN MOSCHINO

“The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More
precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be
serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”
– Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

MODEL ABBEY LEE KERSHAW GIVES US A
GOLDEN MERMAID MOMENT IN THOM BROWNE

“But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness (both tragic and
comic) of high culture and of the high style of evaluating people. And one cheats oneself,
as a human being, if one has respect only for the style of high culture, whatever else one
may do or feel on the sly.” – Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

EMILY BLUNT GLISTENS HEAD TO TOE IN MICHAEL KORS

“But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness (both tragic and
comic) of high culture and of the high style of evaluating people. And one cheats oneself,
as a human being, if one has respect only for the style of high culture, whatever else one
may do or feel on the sly.” – Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

REGINA HALL KILLS IT IN DAPPER DAN

Val Garland’s gold glitter fantasy for the Preen Fall 2018 runway.

SALMA HAYEK, GLAM IN GUCCI

“Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the
little triumphs and awkward intensities of “character”…Camp taste identifies with what
it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label
as “ a camp,” they’re enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling.”
-- Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp

The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibit, Notes On Camp runs through September 8, 2019.

For more, please visit Camp: Notes on Fashion.

May 22nd 2019