Tom Ford may be one of Anna Wintour’s closest friends, but he’s got some harsh words about what the Met Gala has become.
“It’s turned into a costume party,” Ford told former New York Magazine editor Amy Odell in an excerpt of her forthcoming book, “Anna: The Biography,” published by Time on Monday.
“That used to just be very chic people wearing very beautiful clothes going to an exhibition about the 18th century,” the fashion designer — who served as an honorary chair of the 2021 event — continued.
“You didn’t have to look like the 18th century, you didn’t have to dress like a hamburger, you didn’t have to arrive in a van where you were standing up because you couldn’t sit down because you wore a chandelier.”
Images of hamburgers and chandeliers could of course only refer to one person: Katy Perry, who arrived on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019 dressed as an oversized and fully functioning chandelier and, once inside, changed into a bedazzled hamburger costume, the latter of which bewildered fellow guests like Jennifer Lopez.
Indeed, 2019’s camp theme ushered in some of the most over-the-top looks the fundraising event has ever seen — including Kim Kardashian’s impossibly whittled waist, courtesy of the extreme corset she wore under her Thierry Mugler dress.
According to Odell, Wintour repeatedly asked longtime friend and former Vogue West Coast director Lisa Love to instruct Kardashian to sit down — but the reality star was physically unable to bend (or breathe) thanks to her underpinnings.
Do the increasingly bizarre and impractical dressings bother Wintour? Apparently not.
“It’s that English part of her. She loves a dress-up party,” Love told Odell.
Ford apparently isn’t too bothered by the hoopla, as he is returning as honorary co-chair for next month’s event, the theme of which is “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibit. And it seems Perry may not draw his ire this time around; the pop star recently told Page Six Style that her 2022 Met Gala look won’t be anything fantastical.
“You know, it would be pretty obvious for me to go play the kooky, crazy, wild, big, fun, colorful card,” Perry said. “This time, I’m going to play a whole different card.”