Amid a global economic downturn and worsening inflation in America, critics had described the theme for this year’s Met Gala – Gilded Glamour and White Tie – as “out of touch”.
Though one might argue it was incredibly apt; poverty was rife in late-19th century New York, even while elites on the Upper East Side continued to hold “patriarch balls”, in order to create “a circle of elite New Yorkers at the top of the city’s social hierarchy”, as Sven Beckert wrote in his 2003 book The Monied Metropolis.
