In a time of plague, decadence has gone into hiding. And the biggest victim may be Anna Wintour.
As a child, I used to wait for Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed List in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the gowns donned by the superstars at the Met Gala, held the first Monday of May since 2005. As a teenager, I sought out pictures posted to Vogue, the fashion bible that has organized the event for decades, the very next day.
Today, it’s hard not to scroll through Page Six in disgust at solipsistic celebrities bawling all over their Birkin bags because they’re missing the Costume Institute Gala.
The coronavirus has locked all of us into a new state of surreality. For 30 million people, that means losing their jobs. For the elite few hundred granted entry by the gala’s boss, Vogue editor-in-chief Wintour, it means the inability to toss back Moët & Chandon in a 50-pound chandelier dress custom-made by Jeremy Scott.
Never has the petty decadence of Wintour’s empire seemed so culturally tone deaf. Wintour, a diva so legendary that Meryl Streep lampooned her into the ironic villain of the Devil Wears Prada, has lost all of the leverage that once made her the most feared woman in Manhattan.
The coronavirus may have shocked the Met Gala out of existence temporarily, but Wintour’s and Vogue’s relevance has been on the wane for a while. Thanks to the internet, today’s college-aged girls do not learn style from the “September Issue,” but instead from Instagram. With the influence of the magazine fading, the Met Gala cancellation couldn’t possibly have come at a worse time. Without Gala tickets to hold over the heads of wannabe socialites, Wintour’s influence, like the rest of ours, is relegated to the confines of the internet.
The coronavirus and the economic devastation it has inflicted may cast in a stark light the absurdity of celebrities cosplaying as Catholics as they take sexy bathroom selfies, but Wintour was already misfiring before this plague — most notably in her attempt to rehabilitate Marchesa’s Georgina Chapman, ex-wife of convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein.
Weinstein. Conspicuous consumption. Ostentation. These were the dressings of a decadent culture. The current austerity may kill America’s appetite for that.
The Met Gala will likely return next year, but this one woman’s reign of decadence may be over.
