CAMP, THE 2019 MET FASHION GALA: WHEN COUTURE ENTERS INTO THE WORLD OF ART

According to the Met, this year's exhibition, titled "Camp: Notes on Fashion," is based on the fact that “we are going through an extreme camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalized cultures,” -said Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute-, and will examine "how the elements of irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration are expressed in fashion." But one must go beyond fashion and focus on couture, that is not only defined by camp or its source, kitsch, but by a larger set of criteria -such concepts as color, form, perspective, movement, light, shapes-, which if added to the elements previously named by Bolton, the sum of all of them will transform couture [a dress (1980’s Kawakubo’s distinct, exaggerated, even hyperbolic esthetic ) or an installation (see Christian Lacroix in the Montreal Museum of Art) or a walk down a "pasarela" that resembles a  haiku by Buson (a photo by Irving Penn of a Balenciaga’s dress worn by a model standing on what it looks like paper or an unrolled canvas ) or a character in a performance wearing costumes for giant balls or an opera, where both wearer and couture become a theatrical expression]: an art piece in itself. At present, cotoure and camp are interwoven. Camp is not art but a sensibility, just like angst was part of Germany’s 1930’s zeitgeist, and we all know the results, thus one must be careful as to where camp is leading us. It would be nice if cotoure -like all art expressions- would be cheaper, but that is another narrative.