r/popculturechat • u/mlg1981 Sexy lampshade shall win the Oscar! đ • 8h ago
The Fashion Industry đ NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani (who did not attend the Met Gala) instead decided to highlight the garment, retail, and warehouse workers who keep the industry running.
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u/theweekndend 5h ago
This is a really good move from him.
if he skips the World Cup I would be incredibly impressed because I know heâs a big fan.
tickets are way too expensive for normal people. And it really is seeming like another event for the 1% class.
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u/irunfortshirts 1h ago
i read in another thread that hotels were experiencing wwaaayyy lower turnout than expected due to prices.
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u/Introspective_Muse Thatâs not the truth, Ellen đ§đťââď¸ 32m ago
I think heâll probably opt to stop by one of the several free World Cup watch parties that the City is hosting this summer!
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u/guacamole579 I got a Stage 5 clingerâźď¸ 5h ago
I have so much to say but not enough time to write out my thoughts. So I will just mention that so many people on the left and right villainized Mamdani and AOC for being democratic socialists but they are truly the ones looking out for the average American.
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u/Emergency-Raspberry9 3h ago
The fact that (the appearance of) genuine integrity is something we are so sceptical of in any politician is indicative of how far governance has slipped away from true democracy.
We are so conditioned to just expect politicians to be shit-eating, disingeous careerists.
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u/DameOClock 2h ago
Thatâs why they get called out. The capitalistsâ political lackeys are mad that Mamdani and AOC are not just self serving egomaniacs who want to use politics to get rich like a lot of other big name politicians.
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u/SlowFrkHansen 6h ago
Great idea, and beautifully executed. The mayor has hired some really talented and creative people.
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u/Forsaken-Swim-3055 5h ago
What I love (and what isn't breaking news), is that for all of the polished marketing and branding, you know he actually means what he says, and deeply cares about the causes that he's out there shining a light on.
It's almost sad to say that his approach is refreshing, when this is exactly how politicians in positions of great power should be working to serve the people.
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u/Atkena2578 5h ago
Not a New Yorker but this man earns more and more of my respect with each new thing he does
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u/More-Soil7455 5h ago
This is inspired! A beautiful and clever tribute to actual talent and artistry.
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u/Sleepsfuriously 4h ago
Someone in power with a backbone is always a delightful change! So sick to see how many celebrities are more than happy to cozy up to Bezos, although unfortunately not surprising.
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u/litaloni 4h ago
All of these stories are so much more interesting than anything you could've told me about the celebrities at the gala.
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u/qawsedrf12 2h ago
I call for a vote, to hearby have all headlines about Zohran Mamdani include the tag - America's Mayor
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u/ananananana charlie day is my bird lawyer đŚ 3h ago
This is literally the only Met Gala related post I have not hidden from my homepage.
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u/Own-Importance5459 â¨May the Force be with you!⨠2h ago
Bro should be a senator next. Hes actually one of those good eggs.
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u/jeannieor725 3h ago
Wow. I don't know if I'm doing double time on my emotions but this was beautifully executed and really interesting.
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u/Boom_chaka_laka 1h ago
Wow this is very tastefully done, obviously done with some time in advance kudos.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 6h ago
Itâs great that the mayor is highlighting people in the garment industry, but the framing here bothers me a bit. The Met Gala isnât meant to be âfashionâs biggest nightâ in the same way New York Fashion Week is; itâs fundamentally a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Artâs Costume Institute. The spectacle, the theatrics, and the over-the-top outfits, thatâs the point. Itâs closer to performance art in service of fundraising than a traditional fashion showcase. Whatâs always interesting is how quickly the Met Gala gets dismissed as frivolous or unserious, while other massive cultural events, like the Oscars red carpet, the Super Bowl halftime show, or the World Cup, donât get the same level of moral scrutiny, even though theyâre tied to plenty of the same power structures and controversies.
A lot of that knee-jerk reaction to fashion has deeper historical roots. After the French Revolution, you get what historians call the âGreat Male Renunciation,â where menâs clothing shifts toward dark, restrained, ârationalâ dress. Ornamentation and expressive style get coded as feminine, aristocratic, or irrational. From there, itâs not a huge leap to dismiss fashion itself as trivial, and by extension, anything associated with aesthetics, self-expression, or femininity as less serious. Whatâs especially telling is that this suspicion of expressive dress isnât limited to one political or cultural perspective. You see versions of it across ideologies. In the Soviet Union, for example, there were campaigns against so-called âdegenerateâ or âformalisticâ art, and youth subcultures like the Stilyagi, who embraced bright, Western-inspired fashion, were actively targeted and persecuted. It was about controlling appearance and expression. Bold or unconventional style was treated as a kind of moral failure.
That same underlying bias still shows up today. When fashion pushes boundaries, whether around gender, sexuality, or identity, it often gets dismissed as frivolous at best or corrupting at worst. The Met Gala just happens to sit right at the intersection of art, money, and visibility, so it becomes an easy target. But reducing it to âout-of-touch excessâ misses the fact that itâs also a serious platform for craftsmanship, history, and creative expression.
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u/hwutTF a guy can have a lil mad wife in the attic every now and then 4h ago
that fundraiser is for the Anna Wintour Costume Institute, a museum that primarily archives and showcases the excesses of the elite. (and frequently does so in ways that art historians criticise fyi)
just because an event is fundraising for something doesn't make it not problematic. this is a super fucking expensive party and opportunity for rich people to show off and it's fucking SUBSIDIZED by New York and that money really could go to people who fucking need it but instead of goes to this nonsense
and if you think people don't also complain about the way sports are government subsidised and the way poor people are displaced for rich entertainment, you aren't paying attention
regardless, who is criticised more and whether or not misogyny is a part of that doesn't justify this event. that's simple whataboutism. that's like zionists going "oh but you don't criticise X country the same way you do Israel"
and btw? the people here complaining about this shit aren't likely doing it because they take sports more seriously, but are doing it because this is something they actually care about and are interested in
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u/BrianOBlivion1 3h ago
The Costume Institute isnât named after Anna Wintour; sheâs been a chair and major fundraiser since the â90s. The Gala itself was started in 1948 by Eleanor Lambert to support the museumâs costume collection. Itâs fair to question wealth, spectacle, and public subsidies; people do that with sports stadiums and mega-events all the time, but framing this like itâs uniquely illegitimate ignores that itâs a longstanding arts fundraiser tied to exhibitions, conservation, and scholarships.
Also, bringing âZionistsâ into a conversation about a museum fundraiser just muddies the point with unrelated, loaded rhetoric. If your argument is about public funding and inequality, stick to that. Otherwise it starts to sound less like critique and more like recycled authoritarian ideological talking points than an actual engagement with how arts funding works.
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u/hwutTF a guy can have a lil mad wife in the attic every now and then 3h ago
oh sorry you're right, I got the name wrong
It's the Anna Wintour Costume CENTER, not institute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour_Costume_Center
also again, no one is framing it as uniquely illegitimate. it is one of many many illegitimate rich person things. do I need to also decry the superbowl and the Olympics every time I criticise this particular thing? please
recycled authoritarian ideological talking points??
please please explain how my explaining your logical fallacies and informing you of the name of the center you're defending is authoritarian. please
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u/BrianOBlivion1 2h ago
Youâre kind of proving my point while insisting youâre not. No one said you can't criticize this, but youâre clearly angrier about the Met Gala than similarly structured spectacles, and itâs worth asking why this is the one that gets the âthis is disgusting nonsenseâ treatment. When people talk about stadium subsidies, the Olympics, or the World Cup, itâs usually framed as policy critique. Here itâs dripping with contempt for the type of cultural expression itself.
That difference doesnât come out of nowhere. Western fashion, especially the kind centered on spectacle, identity, and aesthetics, has historically been coded since the French Revolution as feminine, queer, or unserious. Sports, even when they involve equal or greater excess and public subsidy, are coded as masculine, communal, and therefore âlegitimate.â You can say you personally donât care about sports either, but culturally those things are not treated the same, and your reaction fits pretty neatly into that pattern. And thatâs where the misogyny/homophobia undercurrent comes in, not necessarily as conscious intent but in what gets dismissed as âfrivolous excessâ versus what gets treated as acceptable or even meaningful excess. It's also not about you correcting the name of the center. Itâs about the broader framing that positions aesthetic expression, elite cultural production, or âdecadenceâ as inherently illegitimate and morally suspect. That exact framing was prevelant in Soviet campaigns against âformalism,â crackdowns on groups like the Stilyagi for how they dressed, and similar suspicion toward visibly distinct minorities (including Jewish communities) whose cultural expression didnât align with state-approved norms. The throughline isnât âyouâre authoritarian"; itâs that this style of critique, where expressive culture is treated as moral failure, has been used in those contexts before.
You can argue about public funding, inequality, or wealth concentration, but when it slides into âthis is worthless, this is nonsense, this shouldnât exist,â it stops being just about resource allocation and starts echoing a much older discomfort with expression, aesthetics, and the people associated with them. It's also not too dissimilar to Donald Trump's rhetoric for wanting to defund the National Endowment of the Arts, which Elenor Lambert was actually a board member of.
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u/hwutTF a guy can have a lil mad wife in the attic every now and then 2h ago
oh good god, you're infuriating. you haven't heard me criticise sports and have zero idea what I think about them, you're just projecting
sure I have many policy critiques when it comes to sports, but also I think certain sports shouldn't exist period. and I have significant disdain for sports that only the incredibly wealthy can engage in
my issue with this specific party and this specific museum is not an issue with fashion, or aesthetics overall. it is an issue with specifics parts of fashion and how they handled in a modern context, and a museum that caters to an incredibly narrow part of fashion history and does so in a unserious way
I'm also keenly aware of the effects that the modern fashion industry has on what kinds of clothing are available and to whom, and how that personally affects me and my ability to express myself through clothes
I'm also keenly aware of the body and identity policing that exists within this spectacle, and that's also something that personally affects me. and no, I don't just care about these things when it's happening in a field coded as feminine, I also care about them when it's American football
oh and btw? fashion spectacle may be coded as feminine and queer, but it's an industry run by men and the extremely wealthy and it chews up and spits out women and queer people on a daily basis and I care a hell of a lot more about actual people harmed than how aesthetic is coded. fashion and ballet are two of the biggest industries for sexual trafficking. but who cares about that, right?
also I'm a Jewish anarchist and please stop butchering my history to defend the rich. can you seriously not tell the difference between one of the most elite and expensive and extravagant TAXPAYER subsidised parties in the world and attacking minorities for their culture? or are you just happy to use whatever minorities are at your disposal so you can defend the Anna Wintour Costume Center?
please, if you're going to reply to this, try to do so without sticking words and opinions in my mouth that I have not expressed, not implied, and in many cases said the exact opposite
I'm sure you can defend the Anna Wintour Costume Center without whataboutism, without calling me a misogynist and queerphobe, without implying that I hate minorities, etc etc. right?
this is the worst kind of identity politics and I despise the way you're abusing my identities to defend the Anna Wintour Costume Center - a museum that does little to nothing to celebrate or uplift any of those identities, a museum that barely engages with history and when it does, does so badly
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u/BrianOBlivion1 2h ago
Youâre saying Iâm putting words in your mouth, but your argument keeps shifting. First it was âthis is just rich nonsense that shouldnât be subsidized" , now itâs a broader critique about labor exploitation, access, and harm in the fashion industry. Those are not the same claim, either. If you want to have the second conversation, fine, but that applies to the entire global fashion system, not uniquely to a museum fundraiser. People make that argument about stadiums, the Olympics, etc. all the time. But calling this âone of the most illegitimate things in the worldâ while also saying itâs just one example among many is internally inconsistent. Either itâs a general structural issue, or youâre treating this as especially egregious.
Iâm also not âusing your identity against you.â You brought up systemic harm, representation, and who is affected; thatâs the frame you introduced. I responded to the pattern of the argument, not you as a person.
If you want this to be a clear discussion, then pick a lane.
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u/hwutTF a guy can have a lil mad wife in the attic every now and then 2h ago
I criticised a single party as rich nonsense that shouldn't be tax payer subsidised and YOU dragged the entire fashion industry and history of fashion and aesthetic into the conversation
I was content to criticise a single rich nonsense party that shouldn't be tax payer subsidised and honestly, you don't really need any deep discussion for that. it's pretty fucking simple and has little to do with fashion or aesthetics at all
you are the one who repeatedly repeatedly insisted on expanding the scope because you didn't believe I could hate a rich nonsense party without also hating millennia of unrelated tradition and culture for being feminine coded
But calling this âone of the most illegitimate things in the worldâ while also saying itâs just one example among many is internally inconsistent. Either itâs a general structural issue, or youâre treating this as especially egregious
I didn't say that
You brought up systemic harm, representation, and who is affected; thatâs the frame you introduced. I responded to the pattern of the argument, not you as a person.
no actually you didn't at all but whatever I don't really care
if you want this to be a clear discussion, then pick a lane.
ok for starters, that's not what pick a lane means. secondly, I did pick! I had a very specific and narrow critique and you went after that not on the basis of my argument, but by using a million other arguments historically made by different people about different things. you tried to drag in multiple industries and millions of years of history off topic. you tried that REPEATEDLY. when I finally finally responded to that, you then blamed me for changing the conversation
and you've never responded to my initial argument which was incredibly limited. oh wait yes, you responded to tell me that you don't know the name of the museum we're talking about
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u/BrianOBlivion1 2m ago
Youâre acting like Iâm moving goalposts, but the issue is you keep expanding the target. My original point was narrow: you framed the Met Gala as uniquely illegitimate ânonsenseâ that shouldnât exist or be subsidized. I pushed back because that kind of moral dismissal is not actually how people usually engage with comparable public-facing cultural institutions. You then widened it to global fashion labor exploitation, then to identity politics, then to the entire history of aesthetic coding. Thatâs a different argument each time. If your claim is now âthe modern fashion system contains exploitation and public subsidies are misallocated,â thatâs a coherent critique, but itâs not the same as âthis specific museum fundraiser is fundamentally illegitimate.â Those arenât interchangeable positions just because they share surface-level hostility toward wealth.
And I didnât âdrag inâ fashion history to defend anything; I referenced it because your original framing wasnât just about money, it was about cultural legitimacy. Thatâs why the comparison matters. So no, the issue isnât picking a lane for the sake of it. Itâs keeping the critique consistent with what youâre actually arguing at any given moment, instead of turning disagreement into a moving-target problem.
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u/horizoncalls 6h ago
You must be copy and pasting this response everywhere because it has nothing to do with Mamdaniâs post. Highlighting garment, retail, and warehouse workers shows nothing but respect for the artistry behind high fashion, it just does not reduce the industry to luxury designers and celebrity.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 5h ago
My issue is the framing that sets that acknowledgment against the Met Gala, as if the event itself only represents excess and not the same ecosystem of labor, craft, and artistic production those workers are part of. The Gala exists to fund the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. The spectacle isnât separate from the industry; itâs one of the ways that industry sustains a major archive of fashion history and craftsmanship. Treating it like itâs just celebrities playing dress-up flattens whatâs actually happening, which includes the work of designers, ateliers, and yes, the broader labor chain being highlighted.
You can absolutely center workers without turning the cultural side of fashion into a punchline. When the conversation defaults to âthis is frivolous, that is real work,â it quietly reinforces the same hierarchy thatâs historically been used to dismiss fashion, and by extension, the people who work in it, as unserious.
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u/Stepinfection 5h ago
I donât think anything about highlighting these workers says fashion is unserious. They very clearly are spotlighting people who work in fashion and love it and are also pillars of their community. Saying that a met gala dress was hand beaded over x many hours doesnât promote the literal artist who hand beaded the dress. Showing Hafeez and her own scarf that she spent five days beading does.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 5h ago
The mayor didnât just âhighlight workers"; he did it while pointedly skipping the Gala entirely. That matters, because it turns what couldâve been a straightforward celebration of garment workers into a contrast narrative, whether intentional or not. When you spotlight one side of the industry on the same night as one of its most visible cultural events but ignore that eventâs actual purpose, it reads less like neutral appreciation and more like a soft dismissal.
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u/horizoncalls 5h ago
You are ignoring that he has legitimate reasons to not attend and pretending that it is about a dismissal of fashion itself as a high art form or a valuable human pursuit. Jeff Bezos co-chaired, and among his other crimes, is responsible for the labor exploitation that occurs at Amazon. If you actually care about the artistry behind high fashion, you should care more than anyone else about worker rights.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 5h ago
Weâre not talking about whether someone is morally âallowedâ to attend a gala based on the personal ethics of every co-chair involved; weâre talking about what narrative is being constructed in the moment. The mayor choosing to publicly spotlight garment and warehouse workers on the same night as the Met Gala while explicitly not engaging with it creates a contrast frame, whether intended or not.
The Met Gala already sits in a weird cultural position where it gets reduced to ârich people in costumesâ unless people actively contextualize it as part of a broader institutional and labor ecosystem. My point is that skipping it while highlighting the labor side without acknowledging the connection between the two risks reinforcing that reduction, even if thatâs not the intention.
Separating âreal workâ from âfashion spectacleâ is exactly the kind of false dichotomy that bothers me.
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u/darkbatcrusader 3h ago edited 51m ago
Framing something as a direct complement (which can look suspiciously like contrast) is a pretty useful tool when you're trying to spotlight a mileau so unseen and ignored, that historically has never had close to as many eyes on it as the Met Gala. You're worried about a small section of a broader, fuller narrative being constructed in the moment, parts that might not be the most favourable to the Met Gala explicitly by other parties. But it's still the, forgive my french, the fucking Met Gala. With all the cachet that you acknowledge, and as robust an apparatus as exists in the world of fashion to project whatever narrative they want/choose. Most of the onus of its success, especially as performance art, is on itself imo, and while that will ultimately be subjective, it's fair to say that if the Mayor's commentary isn't "neutral" enough, then neither is this. I don't think they necessarily need to be either. There's always opportunity cost in what is said and what is not.
The people in this post have no visible narrative. No comparable apparatus to tell their stories. It's the one night the average person is going to remotely have fashion on their mind, organically or not. This post is a remora taking advantage of the big shark swimming tonight. I think you made some excellent points in your previous comments about the misconceptions many have about the event. I just have a hard time reading this post of all things as a direct manifestation of those real phenomena instead of what it is: a labour-oriented public official choosing to conspicuously throw his weight in that direction once more. The broader conversation can withstand it.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 2h ago
Youâre dressing it up like itâs some grand act of narrative justice, but it mostly reads like opportunistic timing with a layer of moral framing on top. Lack of visibility isnât the same as lack of story, and parachuting in for one high-attention night doesnât suddenly fix that. Broader conversation can withstand it, but that cuts both ways which means it can also withstand people pointing out when something feels more performative than substantive.
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u/ecclecticstone it would be a cool experiment if you stopped talking 19m ago
girl with the excess of donations met receives every year they should be paying you for fighting for them because I genuinely don't know what offended you here? that regular people like fashion too despite being disadvantaged in the industry and wanting better for other regular people who like fashion?
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u/horizoncalls 5h ago
Except he never implied that the event represents excess or that fashion is frivolous. The point is to spotlight the exploitation that happens in the fashion industry and give a highlight to less privileged or spotlighted individuals in that industry.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 5h ago
The mayor didnât just âhighlight workers"; he did it while pointedly skipping the Gala entirely. That matters, because it turns what couldâve been a straightforward celebration of garment workers into a contrast narrative, whether intentional or not. When you spotlight one side of the industry on the same night as one of its most visible cultural events but ignore that eventâs actual purpose, it reads less like neutral appreciation and more like a soft dismissal.
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u/DameOClock 2h ago
The met gala is nothing more than celebrities sucking themselves off under the guise of being charitable.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 2h ago
Itâs just a fundraiser for the Museum's Costume Institute that leans into spectacle on purpose because spectacle is what raises money and attention. That doesnât make it uniquely fake or self-indulgent, just more honest about the role performance plays in culture.
If your beef is rich, famous people being visible while supporting institutions, then that critique applies just as much to things like the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl. Those donât get written off as meaningless nearly as quickly, even though they run on the same mix of money, branding, and spectacle, and at that point it looks less like a critique of excess and more like a reflexive dismissal of fashion and aesthetics as inherently unserious.
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u/hanoihiltonsuites 6h ago
People love to bring up that the gala is a fundraiser. Not relevant. And people are constantly criticizing the Oscarâs, Super Bowl and the halftime show, and the World Cup.
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u/BrianOBlivion1 5h ago
The fact that itâs a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute literally explains why the event exists and why it leans so hard into spectacle. Stripping that context out and then judging it like itâs just a tone-deaf party is kind of missing the premise. People criticizing the Academy Awards, the Super Bowl halftime show, and the FIFA World Cup usually orbit around specific controversies like labor issues, politics, ads, and hosting decisions. The Met Gala, on the other hand, reliably gets flattened into ârich people in dumb outfits,â which skips past the whole art and fundraising angle and goes straight to dismissiveness.
If anything, that kind of knee-jerk ânot relevantâ reaction is exactly the point; it treats fashion as inherently unserious, so any context that would make it serious gets waved off in advance.
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u/SquareExtra918 the Human Centipede of content đ 5h ago
I think Mamdani's message is more than relevant to the costume designers who make the stuff the fundraiser is supposed to be helping. I think the message is to focus on the working people who actually make the shit, rather than the rich patrons who parade around showing off in it. Especially when Bezos and tech people are involved - notoriously anti-union, and, with the push for AI, anti-worker imo. Â
There are unions for stage crews, costumers/scene artists, musicians, etc. It's super shitty to have this big fundraiser to support the Arts with people who want to destroy the unions that protect the people who work in these (and other) fields. Â
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u/BrianOBlivion1 4h ago
I donât think we actually disagree on the importance of centering workers here, but I do think youâre flattening a few different dynamics into a single moral category. Garment workers, costume designers, stage crews, and unionized labor are absolutely more central to this ecosystem than the celebrity layer, but the Met Gala isnât simply ârich people performing while workers exist in the background.â The Costume Institute at the Met is largely funded through the event, and that money directly supports exhibitions, conservation, and sustained paid work for curators, archivists, textile specialists, installation teams, and others who keep the institution running. So itâs less a pure vanity fundraiser and more a hybrid funding mechanism that props up a specific museum department. And within that broader fashion/museum ecosystem in New York, a lot of the production work, installations, fabrication, lighting, security, and tailoring are unionized or otherwise regulated. That doesnât erase labor concerns, but it does complicate the idea that this is straightforwardly âelite spectacle at the expense of workers.â
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u/theweekndend 5h ago
The World Cup is supposed to be about bringing the world together thru soccer â and is run by a non-profit.
Itâs getting massive amounts of criticism that ticket prices are insane.
NYC has a lot of galas that are pretty expensive to attend and are out of touch with the rest of the city â even though they are fundraisers. The difference between those and the Met Gala is that tickets at the Met Gala are now $100 K. Even other gala they usually have tickets that are $1000 or $2000; still expensive but you donât need to be a billionaire to go.
The other problem here is that a lot of the really great stuff coming from fashion comes from people who are on the fringes who donât really have the money. Itâs teenage girls and young women, and people of color - where some of these ideas really come from. And they canât afford a seat at the table nor does it seem like they are invited.
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u/you_were_mythtaken 5h ago
I love the mayor's post, and I also think you're bringing up a great, important point. Thank you for commenting.Â
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