The Met Gala and its red carpet is an annual X-ray of where power lies in fashion and in the adjacent worlds of celebrity, Hollywood and music.
It shows us who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down. It is a heat map showing us the connections between culture and entertainment, between the establishment and new money, between the tech billionaires who have the deep pockets to fund nights like these and the designers whose dresses their wives want to wear. These are the new corridors of soft power, and the Met Gala draws back the veil on the alliances, feuds and fallings-out.
