The Met Gala’s 2016 Theme is Sponsored by Apple — What Do You Think of That?

According to a press release from the office of the Metropolitan Museum, which is more reliable than the oral grapevine that is dinner at a French restaurant with an old publicist-cum-friend, the Costume Institute’s 2016 theme and gala will focus on technology’s impact on fashion.

It will be underscored by Apple.

No looking glass.

No punk.

No extravagant Alexander McQueen dresses (though worth mentioning is the imagery from Vogue’s announcement: a still from McQueen by Sarah Burton’s FW 2013 collection).

The honorary co-chairs for the event (in my opinion, the theme’s best quality and what will give it durable legs) are Nicolas Ghesquière, Karl Lagerfeld and Miuccia Prada, three of the most forward-thinking designers who have demonstrated pretty remarkable strength in reinventing their respective wheels for popular consumption.

The press release cites a quote from the Met’s CEO:

“Fashion and technology are inextricably connected, more so now than ever before. It is therefore timely to examine the roles that the handmade and the machine-made have played in the creative process. Often presented as oppositional, this exhibition proposes a new view in which the hand and the machine are mutual and equal protagonists.”

That makes a lot of sense, and in many ways contextualizes the theme against the obvious proliferation of Instagram and otherwise platforms. And don’t get me wrong — some of the most interesting and compelling minds in fashion, art and culture stand behind the institution who put this theme together, but doesn’t it feel a little too soon for a technology theme? Not like it’s lazy, but like it’s too “real” or something?

A visit to The Met has long felt like an alternate universe where you are encouraged to switch off the reality in which you live in order to take a step back in time — to fantasize about the ancient artifacts that stand among you. Technology (ironically a totem of cyber life) is too current to cushion that fantasy and alternate reality. In many ways, this is what good fashion allows us to do, too. With a theme that is so tactile, so correlated to the realities we live, where’s that suspension of belief?

Should we even be pursuing that?

The other thing, I guess, is the potential looming fear that we, as an industry, are afraid to get left behind. Just last year the CFDA honored Instagram with the media award for 2015.  The business of fashion’s reach to connect with a younger audience? Or is this our new reality?

Photograph via Style Bubble, Feature Photograph by Bert Stern for Vogue via The Red List.

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