Met Gala 2024: A Glance Into The Short Story That Started It All
The Met Gala 2024 has been taking the internet and the fashion world by storm. The official Costume Institute exhibition on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," but the dress code and general theme of the Met Gala is the "Garden of Time." The internet is efflorescent with celebrities and fashionistas decked in their various interpretations of the theme, with florals bagging the prize for the night. However, a closer look at the theme tells us that the titular garden is, in fact, not a real garden consisting of real flowers at all.
What is the 'Garden of Time'?
The title belongs to a 1962 short story written by English novelist, short story writer and satirist J.G. Ballard. The tale is a decadent little piece that narrates the lives of Axel and his wife, the Countess, who lives in a Palladian villa filled to the brim with all the comforts. However, the prize feature of the villa is a garden curated by Axel that consists entirely of the flowers of time. The flowers, with their "opaque outer petals" and long, shining stems were the literal embodiment of time, with a crystal heart in between that both represented and held, time.
Each day, Axel worriedly notices a throng of an army consisting of common men and women advancing to take over his villa. To keep this encroaching army at bay, Axel resorts to plucking a time flower from his garden, this 'buying more time', in a literal sense, from his own end. As the days go by, the garden dwindles, with not more than a handful of flowers, the smaller ones too little to be given the time to mature and bloom. When the garden was reduced to the final two buds, Axel and his wife decides to pluck them both together to buy a few final moments of peace and complacency in their life before the mob would approach the villa and end it all.
What Does the Tale Refer to?
It could refer to whatever you want it to refer to. While the central theme is most definitely the staunch reality of the passing of time and the absolute cosmic inability to reclaim lost time, many say that its about class differences. Some opine that 'The Garden of Time' refers to climate change and inequities, while some are confident that it points to an uprising and the overthrow of aristocracy. The story, however, tends to draw our focus on the sheer limited nature of our resources and of time itself, and of the fact that those in power cannot always remain sedated against the truths of the world.
How do the Met Gala looks tie in?
Many stars took the garden element literally bringing to the forefront an entire vibrant forest of florals and spring. Stars like Alia Bhatt, Demi Moore, Nicki Minaj, Alexandra Michler Kopelman, Jessica Serfaty, Zendaya, Jordan Roth, and Dan Levy, to name a few, came decked in an entire orchard, while some others played around with the concept a little and drew in strands from the short story.
Singer-songwriter Tyla in custom Balmain became a sandstone sculpture with an hourglass accessory, no doubt to emphasise the concept of 'sands of time.' Actress Elle Fanning also wore a custom Balmain that hugged her figure like a dress made of ice, borrowing from the glass timeflowers from Ballard's short story. Singer Camila Cabello carried a red rose frozen in a literal block of ice, the accessory melting in her grasp, to showcase the finitude of time, always melting away before we can truly hold on to it. 'Mystery guest' Entrepreneur Mona Patel wore Law Roach, a dramatic Iris Van Herpen gown adorned by actual ticking clocks.
It has, no doubt, been incredibly interesting to watch fashion designers and artists come together to create some complex interpretations of the theme based off of a short story released decades ago. What do you think next year's Met Gala theme would be?
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