Written by Jacqui Palumbo
When celebrities walk the May 2nd Met Gala red carpet, there likely won’t be a shortage of boning and bustle.
That’s because the dress code for this year’s event, hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, is Gilded Glamor and White Tie, referencing the lavish era of American fashion in the final decades of the 19th century , as industrialization rapidly increased fashion the country’s wealth gap.
This Met Gala accompanies the second part of the Costume Institute’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibit, which opened last September and spearheaded the clothing from the previous event. And while there always seems to be a degree of flexibility when A-list attendees interpret the theme (“What’s more American than a head-to-toe t-shirt?! black, spectral Balenciaga look),” this prompt gives guests the opportunity to pursue their most decadent ambitions.
“It’s very ornate, very over the top, very structured,” fashion historian and curator Kate Strasdin said of Gilded Age style in a video interview. “It feels so cushioned compared to the way we think about clothes today.”
An evening dress and ball gown from House of Worth, the first French couture salon to open shop and influencing American fashion overseas. Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Golden Age was a 30-year period in which industrialists and real estate tycoons saw fortunes soar to staggering heights thanks to the rapid expansion of trains, factories and urban centers. Famous family names such as Frick, Astor, Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt shaped the country’s infrastructure, and notables of the time, including Caroline Schermerhorn Astor and Alva Vanderbilt, ruled New York society.
For the elite, fashion went to the maximum, with lace and crystal trimmings and even bird wings – milliners in this era used so many feathers, wings and stuffed dead birds in their hats that this prompted the formation of the Audubon Society to protect birds, in 1895 , according to the organization. Beneath their buttocks-emphasizing dresses, American women wore intricate undergarments, including corsets, padded shoulder pads, ruffled pads, crinoline (a type of structured petticoat), and even steel feathers to achieve the correct shape, although silhouettes were simplified by the end of the century. Men’s fashion was also very formal, with the newly popular tuxedo becoming the standard dress for high-flying gentlemen by the 1880s.
Corsets made an appearance on red carpets last year and laid the groundwork for the Met Gala. Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
With a focus on American designers at the gala, some will no doubt rise to the magnitude of the challenge, like Moschino’s Jeremy Scott, whose opulent interpretations of historical references include sending panniers inspired by the 18th century down the runway. Celebrities can also turn to Christian Siriano or Pyer Moss for their exaggerated, highly structured couture pieces, or look back at vintage designs by Alexander McQueen from across the pond that used nods to the era, like caged crinolines. Corsets have already infiltrated the red carpet of late, with Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat and Dua Lipa wearing them to the Grammys last month.
status icons
During the Golden Age, you were what you wore, as Strasdin noted, this was the time when fashion house branding was a novel concept. Many American women of the time bought their status-enhancing dresses in Paris from the pioneers of haute couture: Charles Worth, Jacques Doucet, Paul Poiret and Madame Jeanne Paquin, the latter of whom showed her innovative modern designs at the 19th century World’s Fair.
According to Strasdin, American seamstresses would not have their time until World War I interrupted the supply of European goods to the United States.
“American women actually have to travel there, so that’s the first sign of tremendous wealth — to actually go there for the fittings,” she said. “So now it became like Instagram influencers — (the women would) come back with dresses that people knew they bought in Paris.”
Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt in her Electric Light dress (left) and Alva Vanderbilt in her Venetian Renaissance Lady costume at the Vanderbilt Ball (right). Photo credit: José María Mora (2)
At a time when “old money” scoffed at “new money,” like the Vanderbilts’ newly amassed railroad fortune, it was important to be well connected to European culture. When Alva Vanderbilt, hoping to be inducted into the upper echelons of society, threw a tantrum for her newly completed midtown mansion called the Petit Chateau. Meanwhile, her sister-in-law Alice wore a stunning dress known as the “electric light” dress from Charles Worth’s House of Worth salon. She paired the look with a flashlight, which she raised above her head in a posed image to resemble the Statue of Liberty.
“The dress itself[had]all sorts of embellishments designed to catch the light,” Strasdin said. “And then she had an electric flashlight, which was really fashionable at the time. It has gone down in history as one of the iconic garments of the time.”
corset wars
But even as the fashion pendulum swung toward the formal and the sophisticated, the underground aesthetic movement of the 1870s began encouraging women to shed their corsets, stepping back from the social conventions of the Industrial Age. Its female bohemian members donned loose-fitting “artistic” dresses in public that were considered shocking for their association with lingerie. (The male aesthetes like Oscar Wilde were also looked down on for their so-called feminized clothing statements.)
Gilded Age of HBO Credit: Alison Cohen Pink/HBO
Although the movement did not greatly change public dress codes for women, silhouettes caught on somewhat in the private homes of wealthy women. Enter romantic casual wear, the “tea dress” — an artful precursor to 2020’s viral “nap dress” — though according to Strasdin, many tea dresses still “hid a sturdy boned bodice” beneath the fabric. Several such dresses by Adelaide Frick, wife of industrialist and art collector Henry Clay Frick, are housed at The Frick in Pittsburgh, which houses a number of Gilded Age designs.
The rich fashion history of this era caught attention earlier this year with the series The Gilded Age, which premiered on HBO (which is owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery) last January. The show follows two young women as they become entangled in New York society and navigate the changing landscape of old and new money. The show’s lead costume designer, Kasia Walicka-Maimone, who dressed actors Cynthia Nixon, Louisa Jacobson, Denée Benton and Carrie Coon according to their different social backgrounds and aspirations, told Variety in January that her team was “lucky” to pick up this era bring the canvas.
“It’s a time when we can experiment a lot, create a lot and play a lot,” she said.
Gilded Age of HBO Credit: Alison Cohen Pink/HBO
This year’s Met Gala attendees may not be replicating the exact styles of a century and a half ago, but Strasdin finds the theme appropriate for its resonance today, including the influence of wealthy socialites (who make their fortunes from internet influence rather than steel mills ). the modernization of fashion houses.
“It’s going to be great to see a nod to all the embellishments… and a celebration of that kind of hype,” she said. “And all the exuberance of color and shape.”
“And maybe some crazy hats.”
Top image: A still from Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film The Age of Innocence, set during the Golden Age.