Met Gala: what fairytales can teach us about modern fashion trends

Zendaya at New York’s 2024 Met Gala, which marked the opening of the Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition.& Associated Press/Alamy by Cath Davies, Cardiff Metropolitan University Fairytales have long woven magic with fabric. But this year’s Met Gala, the annual fundraiser for the the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York, took the connection between fantasy and fashion a step further. Themed around the museum’s Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition, the dress code focused not on opulent displays of nature’s bounty but a more complex reality: the natural world and the essence of time. Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s short story, The Garden of Time, designers were invited to explore the intricate relationship between materials, their origins, and the fleeting nature of fashion trends. The exhibition, which runs until September, provides an opportunity to reflect on the clash between artificial and natural materials in fashion. The reference to “sleeping beauties” suggests a useful context to consider how tangible, imperishable matter often sits alongside natural substances in fairytale worlds. This tension played out on the Met Gala red carpet, where some attendees embodied the classic elegance of fairytale princesses and Prince Charmings, while others channelled more sinister characters. Dress and...