Glitter and Grief... Can the Met Gala Still Matter in a World on Fire?
Every May, images from the Met Gala flood our feeds: glittering gowns, outlandish suits, celebrities striking surreal poses on the famous Met steps. It’s an annual ritual of opulence, performance, and spectacle. This year, just beyond the velvet ropes, protestors rallied against the genocide in Palestine, their chants of “shame” echoing up the same steps walked by fashion’s elite.
As genocide and increasing wealth disparity consume the headlines and many people struggle to afford rent, groceries, or healthcare, a fair question keeps echoing louder: how can something like the Met Gala still matter?
Is it just an elite costume party, a Hunger Games-style parade for the wealthy? Or is there still something worth defending in this strange, glittering night?
The answer, inconveniently, might be both. You can love a dress and still hate the system.
Yes... the Met Gala is an Excessive Display of Wealth and Privilege
Let’s not pretend otherwise. The tickets are reportedly $75,000 each. Most of us will never see that kind of money in one place, let alone spend it to wear a custom Balenciaga piece for a single evening. Attendees include billionaires, major celebrities, and fashion insiders who often exist in a bubble of luxury that feels deeply out of touch with most people’s reality.
And this year, that disconnect felt sharper than ever. As the Met’s red carpet livestream rolled out, Children are being forcibly starved to death in Gaza. Footage of airstrikes and grieving families appeared on the same timelines as live footage of sequined gowns and "who are you wearing?" interviews. Many people, especially online, voiced their disgust. How could this event continue while genocide was happening? Where were the statements? The solidarity? Literally ANY mention of Palestine?
That outrage is valid. It’s necessary. Some of the most poignant posts this year came from artists and commentators who criticised the silence of celebrities, calling out the entertainment industry's apathy, or fear, when it comes to speaking up for Palestinian lives. That silence shouldn't be forgotten just because the glitter fades.
But we can hold that truth while also asking a different one:
Is the Met Gala Still Important?
Fashion history matters. Museums don’t just hold paintings and sculptures, they hold culture. Clothes tell us what people valued, feared, resisted, and celebrated in any given era. From enslaved people stitching freedom quilts, to suffragettes in white, to drag queens in sequins, what we wear is a record of who we are, and who we’ve dared to be.
This year’s exhibition is especially important.
2025’s Theme: Superfine – Tailoring Black Style
The 2025 theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, is rooted in the work of scholar Monica L. Miller, particularly her book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. The exhibition explores how Black men, in particular, have used fashion, especially tailoring, as a form of self-definition and resistance across centuries. From 18th-century enslaved men using secondhand clothes to reclaim identity, to Harlem Renaissance icons, to modern hip-hop's reinvention of luxury, this exhibit tells stories that are rarely centered in major art institutions.
Usher, a member of the Gala committee, said the theme was timely because it speaks to “our rich culture that should always be widely celebrated.” And he’s right. In a political climate where Black history is being erased from school curriculums and anti-Blackness still permeates global culture, a major institution spotlighting Black style on this scale matters.
Fashion isn't frivolous. It’s political.
And that’s why the silence from many attendees on Palestine stings so much. Because fashion can be a tool for resistance, but when wielded carelessly or selectively, it becomes complicity. In a year where the exhibit centers on the power of style to challenge oppression, the absence of any acknowledgement of the genocide unfolding in Gaza becomes even more conspicuous. It highlights a larger hypocrisy: that many in the industry are happy to celebrate justice when it’s safe, but not when it’s urgent. What’s perhaps most disappointing isn’t the existence of the Met Gala itself, it’s that so few attendees used their enormous visibility to make any kind of political statement, especially when the world was watching. When fashion is political, silence is too. Instagram account @shityoushouldcareabout captured this cognitive dissonance perfectly. The juxtaposition is jarring and intentional. It’s a reminder that attention is a form of currency, and far too often, it’s spent on frivolity while critical issues fade into the background
Where Does the Money Go?
But what many people don’t realise or understandably just never hear about, is that the Met Gala is a fundraiser. It’s not just a party. It’s a benefit for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and that’s not a casual detail. The Costume Institute is the only department at the Met that has to fund itself, meaning without this event, exhibitions like Superfine: Tailoring Black Style simply wouldn't happen at this scale.
In 2025, the Met Gala raised a record-breaking $31 million in a single night. That’s not celebrity appearance fees or some vague brand deal, that’s money going directly into the preservation of fashion history. That money funds:
The preservation and archiving of historic garments from all over the world.
Large-scale fashion exhibitions that bring culture, identity, and politics into the public eye.
Educational programs that engage students, fashion scholars, and the public in learning about the history and power of dress.
Accessibility efforts, including digital initiatives and outreach to communities who might never walk through the Met's doors otherwise.
Without funding, this history risks being lost, especially the histories that were already pushed to the margins. Much of mainstream museum culture has ignored Black fashion, queer designers, Indigenous textiles, and working-class style. The Costume Institute helps fill those gaps, not just by preserving the garments, but by telling the stories behind them.
In other words, that money doesn’t vanish into thin air, or into a celebrity’s purse. It’s invested in a form of historical memory that is often overlooked or undervalued: clothing as cultural text.
Clothes are not just fabric. They tell stories about migration, class, race, gender, resistance, and survival. And like any archive, those stories need space, care, and funding to be told, especially stories that challenge dominant narratives, like this year’s celebration of Black dandyism.
Fashion as Protest, Art as Resistance
Fashion as Resistance, Art as Survival
Clothing has always been a weapon, not just against invisibility but against oppression. Fashion is often dismissed as shallow until you recognise its power to confront authority. Black dandyism was not about assimilation; it was defiance. Enslaved and formerly enslaved people used sharp tailoring, rich fabrics and bold colours to demand recognition and dignity: You will see me. You will respect me. During the Harlem Renaissance, style became political; elegance was a way for Black artists to assert their presence in a world trying to erase them. A silk tie could be a declaration: I exist. I matter. In the 1940s, zoot suits were flamboyant acts of protest. Worn in defiance of wartime rationing by Mexican-American youth, they symbolised refusal to shrink, so threatening to white America that they sparked the violent Zoot Suit Riots.
Fashion, like all art, is inherently political. It channels identity, joy, grief and resistance. For many marginalised communities, it remains one of the few accessible tools of power, and that is precisely why it is so often feared. Art is born from pushback, from the excluded and misunderstood: queer people, migrants, the working class. It thrives on imagining change and questioning norms, which is why it often aligns with the left, and why authoritarian movements seek to suppress it. True creativity requires empathy, openness and rebellion, not obedience.
That is also why art and culture are often the first casualties when fascism rises. In Nazi Germany, modern art was labelled “degenerate”, burned and banned. Mussolini censored fashion, literature and cinema, silencing anything foreign or avant-garde. Today, the pattern continues. In the US, conservative politicians are attacking drag, banning books and defunding arts education. In the UK, “culture wars” have led to attacks on academic freedom and creative institutions. The Tory government’s “war on woke” has targeted diversity in the arts, with threats to defund organisations that do not align with state values. In 2022, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries warned institutions to move away from “woke committees” or lose funding. The BBC, museums and universities face pressure to avoid anything seen as too progressive or “unpatriotic”.
These are not random cultural shifts; they are strategic. Repressive regimes know that art invites people to imagine better futures. That is why it is dangerous. That is why it matters.
Capitalism, however, has learned to sell rebellion. Punk became a T-shirt in Zara. Protest fashion is now paraded on runways sponsored by billion-pound brands. Radical expression is sterilised and sold back to us as “edgy”, but safe. So when the Met Gala is criticised, it is not a rejection of fashion itself, but of how its radical roots have been co-opted. Yet when the event raises millions for the Costume Institute, preserving the legacies of Black designers and queer trailblazers, it becomes something more. Preservation is resistance. Memory is power.
Fashion does not need celebrity worship. It needs courage. It needs critique. And right now, it needs freedom from capital’s grip, where silence is easier to monetise than solidarity.
We Need to Separate Fashion From the System That Strangles It
The Met Gala isn’t evil because it’s about fashion. It’s uncomfortable, even grotesque, because it’s become fashion trapped in the logic of extreme wealth, PR optics, and celebrity worship. It’s not the art form that’s the problem, it’s the system that sells it to us.Fashion is one of the most accessible and universal forms of human creativity, but under capitalism, it’s turned into a hierarchy. It’s designed to make us feel excluded, unworthy, poor, unseen. That’s the version of fashion we need to interrogate: the one that upholds billionaires while children starve. The one that says it’s fine to throw a multi-million-dollar party while refusing to even mention a genocide. The one that rewards silence over solidarity.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can enjoy fashion, care about art, and still demand accountability. We can appreciate the craftsmanship of a gown while also asking why the person wearing it can’t use their platform to speak up. We can protect the beauty while rejecting the bullshit. Because everything is about balance, and we’re way off it. It’s that capitalism keeps trying to make them so.
So, What Do We Do With the Criticism?
We take it seriously. We ask why so many celebrities say nothing about Palestine or other global crises. We challenge them. We listen to the discomfort that people feel seeing glamor during a genocide, because that discomfort is real.
We don’t abandon culture just because it’s been co-opted. We reclaim it, question it, and push it to do better. We don’t give in to the idea that because something is beautiful or artistic, it can’t be meaningful. That’s the same logic that censors queer books, that erases Indigenous art, that shames working-class people for having joy.
We can hold both truths: The Met Gala is excessive and elite, and it also protects, celebrates, and funds vital culture. It’s not above criticism, but it’s not worthless either.
Final Thoughts
As the world grapples with crises, from war to inequality, art, fashion, and culture remind us of what we’re fighting for. They preserve our histories, challenge oppression, and offer a glimpse of the better world we can build.
Holding the Met Gala on the same day it was announced that 290,000 children are at risk of dying from hunger due to the ongoing violence in Gaza felt like a dystopian spectacle, where the elite prance while the most vulnerable face unspeakable suffering.
The Met Gala, with all its excess and privilege, is not without merit. But its glaring disconnect from urgent global issues, like the genocide in Gaza, can’t be ignored. Silence in times of crisis is complicity, and that silence must be challenged.
So yes, call out the hypocrisy. Demand better. But don’t throw the whole thing away. It’s about finding balance. We can demand justice and still protect joy. Because in times like these, joy is resistance too. As always, Free Palestine.
https://www.pcrf.net/information-you-should-know/how-to-help-palestine.html
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