The actor Ezra Miller, who portrays Credence in the Fantastic Beasts franchise, stood out on the Red Carpet at the Met Gala on May 6.
Known for odd looks, the event was the perfect opportunity for Miller. He wore a personalized Burberry suit, with cape and corset covered by crystals and, on the face, a surrealist make-up giving the illusion the actor had seven eyes.
‘Failed Seriousness’
The actor’s look was considered a perfect demonstration gala’s theme, called camp. According to Andrew Bolton, director of the Costume Institute, institution of Metropolitan Museum which promotes the gala, camp it is “impossible to define, but that’s part of its poetry”. On the other hand, the writer Susan Sontag says that camp is characterized by “victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality, of irony over tragedy” or by “failed seriousness”.
The style replies the theme of the new annual exhibition of Metropolitan Art Museum, in New York, with the concept “Camp: notes on fashion”, which will be open from May 9th until September 8th, and it was inspired on the writer’s essay from 1964, Notes on Camp.
According to Bolton, what makes it interesting is its resistance: “It surfaces in moments of social and political instability. It’s at its strongest then. It exists to represent the zeitgeist.”
“I had a lot of bizarre thoughts in my brain and was trying to explain them to several people who, in many cases, received it with apprehension, even fear”, said Ezra to the North-American magazine Garage. “[I see the masked look partly] as this death… like this ultimate transformation that we all have to do at least once. The celebration of camp is almost funereal… it’s almost like it dies as it walks in the room. But I think it consumes the other as well. You know? I think it’s like fire and oxygen.”
Besides marking the premiere of the annual fashion exhibition, Met Gala has the purpose of raise money for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
Translated into English by Caroline Dorigon
Edited by Aline Michel
