Why Lorde Was the Best Dressed Woman at the 2021 Met Gala

The best dressers at the Costume Institute’s annual gala not only get the assignment but exceed it. Think Madonna punkified in 2013 and Rihanna in her immediately meme-able Guo Pei gown in 2015. A Marc Jacobs quote that appears in this year’s exhibit get its exactly right: “If you’re going to get dressed up, get dressed up.” The risk for celebrities, or, more to the point, their stylists, is that sometimes these ambitious gestures can come across as, well, costume-y. Or worse, boring. There was plenty of both on Monday night's red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On the other hand, some celebrities, and the designers who dressed them, took the occasion of "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion," as an opportunity to exalt the qualities that make American fashion unique—its ease, its unpretentiousness, its iconoclasm.

Look no further than Lorde in custom Bode, by the New York designer Emily Bode, who repurposes fabrics and garments for her acclaimed menswear line. If tonight was her way of breaking the news that she's expanding into women's ready-to-wear, she could have hardly picked a better spokeswoman than the Solar Power singer, who happens to be Vogue's October cover girl. Her exquisite gown, with its detailed beadwork and embroideries, may have done more to make the case that upcycled fashion can be fabulous than a hundred sustainability summits. (Incidentally, Bode also dressed gala co-chair Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, one of this year's sponsors.)

Two American designers, Ralph Lauren and Thom Browne, two very different iconoclasts, also had great nights. American fashion is all about swagger, and nobody embodied it better than Jennifer Lopez in a custom-designed western dress by Lauren, who also accessorized using vintage jewelry from his archives. Lauren also dressed Chance the Rapper in a jacket that recalled his celebrated 1992 Stadium collection. The exhibit's curators chose to label each of the more 100 men’s and women’s garments on display with what they describe as the “emotional qualities” of American fashion, and here were two sensational examples of "desire" and "confidence." Other tags— “belonging,” “consciousness,” “affinity”—came across as awkward stabs at wokeness, a classic case of telling instead of showing.

The exhibit—and this year’s mid-pandemic New York Fashion Week collections, now called the American Collections—strived to make a case for American fashion's relevance on the world stage. It’s hard to gauge if it’s done so successfully because the exhibits have been split into two parts, with the second half, "In America: An Anthology of Fashion," making its debut next May. The show that opened to the press Monday had highlights—its generous embrace of fledgling brands, for instance, and the diversity in the make-up of the designers represented.

But judging against the Costume Institute’s own recent productions—which by and large showcased, and were underwritten by, European labels—“A Lexicon of Fashion” is wan, muted, lacking ambition and heart. Mannequins are shown in individual cells that undercut the premise that American fashion is a vibrant tapestry of styles, disciplines, and sensibilities. Where was the vibrance that we saw just over the last week during the New York collections? The show-must-go-on brio of Michael Kors’s presentation at Tavern on the Green? The exuberance of the street that we saw at Tory Burch? The originality of Anna Sui or Willy Chavarria? All these boxes were checked in the exhibition, literally, but they were more like dots in a pointillistic painting that never fully came together.

In that respect, the designers who excelled Monday night made a stronger closing argument on behalf of American fashion's ingenuity than the exhibit they were ostensibly honoring. And they did so, remarkably, against the backdrop of a red carpet that was largely dominated by European labels.

Gossip Girl's Evan Mock turned up in spiked leather hood and short suit by Browne that wouldn't look out of place at The Eagle. It's fantastic—the sort of transgressive statement a red carpet like this demands. Sharon Stone's black silk faille cape, MJ Rodriguez's balloon sleeves, and Lil Uzi Vert's chesterfield coat showed Browne's versatility, and his whimsy—remember when red carpet appearances had a sense of humor? It's a rarity these days, but there it was hanging off Erykah Badu and the writer Amy Fine Collins's shoulders—Browne's handbags in the shape of his Dachshund Hector. You could also find that spirit in Timothée Chalamet's Chuck Taylor All-Stars (and vintage Cartier jewels), and Megan Rapinoe's in "Gay We Trust" clutch by Sergio Hudson.

A handful of other designers deserve to be singled out: Batsheva Hay, who dressed the actress/director Rebecca Hall in a PVC gown with floral motifs; Zac Posen, who turned Deborah Harry into a badass Martha Washington with a denim jacket and ripped hoop skirt resembling an American flag; and Eli Russell Linnetz, whose young label ERL scored two coups this week, a prominent appearance in the "In America" exhibit, and dressing ASAP Rocky, who alongside his girlfriend Rihanna, closed out the Met gala's red carpet (she wore Balenciaga, and a ring by Thelma West Diamonds from the upcoming Sotheby's show "Brilliant & Black: A Jewelry Renaissance").

They all lived up to Jacobs's mandate. Each personified independent style, point of view, chutzpah. And, really, what's more American than that?

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