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

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 materials play a transformative role in fairytales. Who can forget the significance of clothing (and those glass slippers) to Cinderella’s fate? An encounter with Prince Charming only becomes available to her when her torn rags are discarded in favour of a sparkling ballgown.

Scholar Maria Tatar suggests fairytales “favour the metallic”, while armour is a reminder of how materials generate associations with gender roles and social categories. In the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, for example, costume designer Colleen Atwood envelops the wicked Queen Ravenna (played by Charlize Theron) in steel, gold and metalwork.

If luminous, unblemished surfaces initially attracted the prince in Cinderella, the wicked queen in this adaptation needs shimmering minerals and inorganic materials to remain desirable when threatened by the youthful Snow White.

Just like the function of armour on the battlefield, her garments seek an imperishable protection against ageing and mortality.

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