Left: Jeremy Scott for Moschino, SS18. Courtesy of Moschino. Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigital. Right: Photo © Johnny Dufort, 2019.
When The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that “camp” would be the theme of this year’s Met Gala, head curator Andrew Bolton frequently found himself being asked two questions: “Why did you choose camp as the theme?” and “What is camp?” Speaking at the press preview yesterday in New York for the opening of the new exhibition, Camp: Notes on Fashion, Bolton said, “The first question is easy.” He continued, “Camp comes to the fore at time of political and social anxiety, when society is polarised, like in the ‘60s. It challenges the status quo. But the second question is more difficult.”
As the internet sifts through the celebrity looks today, including Kim Kardashian’s chandelier dress by Thierry Mugler or the four-part Brandon Maxwell outfit stripped away by Lady Gaga, and makes decisions about who actually fit the theme, it becomes apparent that the nuances of camp do not lend themselves well to online debate, because the criteria that makes up the concept is itself so elusive.
When creating the exhibition, the curatorial team dedicated the first part of the show just to the etymology of the word. As you pass through Barbie-pink walls to the sound of a 16-year-old Judy Garland singing the camp anthem, “Over the Rainbow,” Bolton traces the history of the word from ancient concepts of the body through to France’s 17th century “Sun King” Louis XIV, to the life and works of Oscar Wilde, revealing how the word changed from its origins as a French verb to a noun and an adjective. The curators draw from a variety of sources including an 18th century text by Voltaire, early dictionary entries and remarks of cultural historian Andy Medhurst, but Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp” — from which the exhibition derives its name — is the Met’s most referenced guide for finding examples of the concept in fashion and art.
Among the fifty four points Sontag makes on the subject – which are projected on the walls of the museum much like a Jenny Holzer piece – her distinction between “naïve” and “deliberate” camp emerges as a focal point for identifying camp and establishing where it begins and ends. Although both forms rely on a relation to seriousness, the former is defined by a “seriousness that fails,” while the latter is defined as “when one plays at being campy.” A form of “deliberate” camp is employed as a code among members of the LGBTQ+ community to communicate safely in order to avoid public persecution. Bolton revealed that some of the corridors within the exhibition space were made deliberately narrow and claustrophobic to create “whisper corridors,” highlighting the “secret, clandestine origins of camp.”
Still, Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci – the Met’s exhibition partner – celebrates the liberty that camp allows. “It is a beautiful word,” a brocade-clad Michele announced to the audience in Italian from behind aviator sunglasses. “In a few letters it teaches how important it is to be free. Camp is a political message.” For the Gucci designer, camp strikes a personal note, bringing him back to a childhood where he was always certain that he wanted to be free to wear whatever he wanted to.
Courtesy of the author.
Fashion is obviously a large part of Camp with creations from the contemporary era making up the second part of the show, along with a soundtrack of designers talking about camp, interspersed with clips of Judy Garland singing the same “Over the Rainbow,” — but this time the recording was made months before she tragically passed away at 47 from exhaustion and over medication. Among the items on display, are the rainbow platform shoes created for the actress in 1938 by Salvatore Ferragamo. Other standout pieces include, Marjan Pejoski’s swan dress, worn by singer Björk to the 2001 Academy Awards and one of the show-stopping Viktor & Rolf meme gowns from the January haute couture runways in Paris. Brands like Gucci, Moschino, Balenciaga and Mugler — known for their exaggerated forms and feather, crystal and over-top-embellishments — also feature prominently as sartorial examples of camp.
Unlike fashion concepts such as haute couture, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when something becomes “camp”. But for Max Hollein, director of the Met, the focus of Camp: Notes on Fashion was not to be a yardstick for measuring campiness, but to create a lens through which an array of work can can considered through — including the museum itself. “We didn’t see ourselves as particularly camp, but now we do,” Hollein said. “We see camp everywhere.”
Courtesy of the author.
Camp: Notes on Fashion opens on 9 May through to 8 September 2019.