I’m actually not sure I buy that people chickened out of punk purely to avoid ridicule or looking overly costumey. Because plenty of people still looked costumey and ridiculous; just in the wrong way, which suggests that a lot of them already knew what larger-than-life silliness they wanted to wear (or in the designers’ case, what they wanted to showcase) and just didn’t care if it fit. For example, if the theme of the Met Ball had been “Cocktail and Cocktail Pajamas,” then this would’ve felt apt:
It’s ’80s, it’s insanely decadent, it feels like something an adult would wear to a party thrown by Prince that promises lots of pillow fights and maybe a tiger in a cage suspended over the center of the room, and I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t also a bathing-suit cover-up. But punk? Not to me., unless you consider that a show called Punky Brewster was on during that decade. That’s some pretty tenuous connective thread though — almost as thin as the Hefty shards creating the car washes on her feet.
[Photo: Getty]
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Met Ball Fug Carpet: Karolina Kurkova
Mary Katrantzou burst onto the scene — well, for me, anyway — with Elizabeth Banks’ insane patchwork of Dear God No at last year’s Met Ball, and has followed it up this time with one of the most confusingly hideous dresses of the night.
Feel the pride positively seeping from her every pore as she stands next to her creation, mercifully modeled by a professional clothes-wearer. Be warmed to the very depths of your soul by her excitement at the prospect of us all gazing upon this, then noticing… whatever is happening on Karolina Kurkova’s left side. Be charmed by her giddy glee as she watches the world wonder if… I mean, it appears to be bulging somehow, and it has… breast-like structure, it seems, and… why is it all the way down there? The physics of Karolina Kurkova’s body, plus the fact that we’ve seen her in plenty of gowns that back this up, would seem to make it impossible that her ENTIRE breast is located at the bottom of her ribcage. Surely it’s a trick of the pattern…?
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