THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY
Director: Andrew Rossi
Cast: Andrew Bolton, Anna Wintour, Harold Koda, Baz Luhrmann, Andre Leon Talley, Rihanna, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Kar-Wal Wong
Rating: (M)
Five stars (out of five)
Reviewed by: Christine Powley
Anybody who reads women’s magazines knows about the Met Gala because, even more than the Oscars, it is the event where celebrity and fashion collide to make fabulousness.
The First Monday in May (Rialto) teases us with the images of models and celebrities that we are used to seeing: Kardashians, actresses and singers all dressed in head-to-toe couture, and then zooms back in time to nine months before when the whole thing was pure concept.
Because, of course, while the first Monday in May is the date of the big shindig it also marks the opening of the Met’s Costume Institute’s major exhibition for the year.
Curator Andrew Bolton had a huge hit with "Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty" in 2011, but by 2014 he was tired of his other exhibitions being unfavourably compared.
With "China: Through the Looking Glass" he intended to top "McQueen".
He managed to get the Asian Arts Gallery to share space with his exhibition, which took Costume out of its basement gallery, so his show would, in effect, be three shows in one.
While Bolton negotiates the visual and intellectual obstacles of mounting such a display, Vogue editor Anna Wintour is undertaking the equally arduous task of hosting a charity ball.
As in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, she has scores of minions to do her bidding but at the end of the day it is her personality alone that puts the Justin Biebers of this world in their place.
