Vogue Cancelled the Met Gala IRL This Year. But That Didn’t Stop a Group of Fashion-Loving Gen Z’ers From Hosting Their Own Version Online

Life in the time of corona is
fraught and full of firsts, even for the editrixes of
Vogue magazine. Last week, Anna Wintour posted candid
pictures of herself running through the woods wearing sweats,
sending the internet
into hysterics. “I never thought I’d see Anna Wintour in
sweatpants,” one user commented on the Vogue
Instagram.

“No one cares, people are
dying,” wrote another. 

In another first this week, the Met Gala, the splashy party held on the first
Monday of every May to inaugurate the Costume Institute’s annual
exhibition, was scrapped for the first time in its history. But
that didn’t stop a group of scrappy young creatives
from assuming the mantle online.

A virtual version of the gala
took place Monday night on High Fashion Twitter (or hft, as it’s
more commonly referred to among its members), bringing together a
community of around 1,000 Generation Z fashion die-hards who
“arrived” to the event by posting mood boards, original
illustrations, collages, or selfies on their personal Twitter
accounts, using the hashtag #HFMetGala2020.

From midnight on, attendees
commented and congratulated one another on their assembled
creations, which ranged from a staged recreation of
Vermeer’s Girl With A
Pearl Earring, featuring lush Filipino Ifugao fabrics, to a
gender-fluid ode to Alexander McQueen’s 2001 Voss collection (which he famously staged from a
glass box resembling the padded cell of a mental
hospital).

“Last year, Aria [Olson], the
founder of the event, said, ‘Why don’t we have our own Met Gala
next year?’” shared Margaux Merz, a 19-year-old fashion journalism
student who co-organized the party with nine other girls from seven different
countries, none of whom have met in real life. 

“We had no idea what would
happen with corona, but we decided that we still wanted to go
through with it after Vogue canceled their gala.”

Together, they came up with four challenges to get party-goers
started: the brand challenge, where gala attendees were tasked with
coming up with images based on looks by under-appreciated
designers; the wardrobe challenge, for which they put together
outfits pulled from their own closets; the illustration challenge,
in which guests made original illustrations of their looks, or ones
they admired; and the open
creativity challenge, allowing them to do whatever they liked
outside the categories already described.

What became abundantly clear
from the hft entries was that, in the right hands, fashion has a
chance of stepping beyond its commercial
framework. And in an
age defined by Wintour’s insistence that celebrity culture and
fashion have to be synonymous for the latter to survive, the
virtual edition, all by itself, was arguably just what the moment
called for.

“I think on High Fashion
Twitter, there is a general critique of [the US edition
of] Vogue, aesthetically,” Merz said. “People still
read It, but whenever the covers are released and it’s just
another celebrity, people are like, ‘Really?’”

“I think that there’s a
consensus that Anna Wintour should retire,” she added. “She did
amazing things in the ’80s and ’90s, but I still think some people
feel that she’s gotten kind of tired. There’s nothing really new
coming out of Vogue.”

Rebeca Spitz, a 20-year-old
painting student who helped organize the virtual gala, feels
similarly.

“American Vogue was, at
some point, the publication in fashion,” she says. “I feel that
in recent years it’s become dominated by celebrity interests, and
it’s not really about the fashion anymore. And for the younger
generation, we’re less interested in celebrities, because most of
them end up being problematic.”

And does she agree that Wintour needs to exit for the publication to
resume its relevance?

“Not necessarily,” Spitz says
with a laugh. “I don’t want to say that Anna needs to be gone,
because I don’t want to put her in a box and say she can’t
grow. But I do think it
needs a breath of youth, and a little
rejuvenation.” 

The post Vogue Cancelled the Met Gala IRL This Year. But That
Didn’t Stop a Group of Fashion-Loving Gen Z’ers From Hosting Their
Own Version Online appeared first on artnet News.