🧹🚨HOUSEKEEPING🚨🧹
I now have a public account on X.com. Posts there will be fundamentally normal in nature.
If you have not seen my “Substack notes,” it is currently #MegalopolisNewsMay. While this is a beautiful and inventive moniker, I suspect Megalopolis News May will continue beyond the month of May and do not suspect that I will change the name. In any case, I would appreciate my readers serving as eyes and ears on this matter so that FBN can be on the frontline–in some circles, the Western Frontline–of any and all news about the great American director Francis Ford Coppola’s movie about Adam Driver #caesarcutmaxxing. Issues of this newsletter will forthwith begin with MNM updates as applicable.
There is a one-time ELVIS EMERGENCY #FarawayElvis: https://x.com/Variety/status/1787606965859803605
This post is “too long for email,” so click on the link and open it and read it on a browser like an adult. PLEASE!
The “dress code” for this year’s “Met Gala” was “Garden of Time” after a J.G. Ballard short story, which to me is a lot like making the theme “In Watermelon Sugar” (something a first year PhD student or British fool would come up with). It opened an exhibition called “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” which, in title, is giving first grade ghostwriter, but is conceptually fine: garments that can’t be worn. It really, seemingly, only exists as an excuse to display the McQueen shell and butterfly dresses, marketed otherwise with attenuated and strenuous copy about “a curation that aims to unstitch and enlighten our understanding of the natural world through the fashioning of dress and textiles.” I can never fully synthesize the curatorial and political goings-ons of the Costume Institute, though, because I don’t have the wherewithal to learn what LVMH and the Wertheimers pay for or don’t–I am busy learning that, astrologically, Josh O’Connor and I are not nearly as good of a match as Austin Butler and I, whose charts align almost exactly–but I feel that I don’t need to in order to know that nothing about these exhibitions ever extends beyond the generic limitations of Educational TikToker Intellectualism.
In any case, I am particularly taken by the idea of clothes made out of bones and bugs, but the words “time” "and “garden” forever doomed this event to be about wearing old stuff on your friend’s brand’s recommendation or LARPing as Elle Fanning in that Hulu show that got canceled (blush, leaves, fertility). Speaking of plants:
These are looks that are good, bad, worn by people that are important, or ?. For the most part I thought this event was boring as ever, apart from the first 10 minutes when I got so excited about the arrival of a Loewe Boys Van I stood 10 inches from my television and took pictures of it like a concert:
?
Tyla in Balmain
Tyla described this look to La La Anthony as “giving sand.” This.
Gigi Hadid in Thom Browne
There is something quite effective with the silhouette, but I’m not sure we could get more literal. Where is your BOYFRIEND, Gigi Hadid?
Adrian Brody in Margiela
Has any movie star ever so successfully, or with such posterity, balanced terror and hotness?
Elle Fanning in Balmain
She looks undeniably incredible, and it’s some of the best styling of the evening. But the dress itself is a child’s interpretation of poetry: a Halloween costume. Hugely disappointing and I’m sick of this weird length of hair that people have. Do NOT show me a lob (long bob).
Amanda Seyfried in Prada
I don’t think this is 1) offensive, 2) pleasant, or 3) exciting. Yet, it is noteworthy. A curiosity, certainly.
Andrew Scott and Jude Law in Versace, together
This is not something that I should have to look at or synthesize information about.
Best:
Taylor Russell in Loewe
On the carpet, Taylor said she’s “happy” in this look because she’s “always wanted to be a tree.”
Rita Ora in Marni
Beads are old. She told Ashley Graham, “these beads are old.” “Old beads” reminds me of Taylor Swift’s “little braid.” My second favorite of the night.
Chris Hemsworth in Tom Ford
I love the way that Australians are naturally and unnaturally terrifying in appearance. This is just a well-made, appropriately on-trend suit. Simone liked it, too.
Keke Palmer
I don’t really care about what’s going on here or how it relates to the theme. Putting Keke Palmer on a Best Dressed list is like putting Alden Ehrenreich on a Hot Guys list: they are career wins.
Troye Sivan in Prada
This is just a great repro of vintage clothes that were great when they weren’t vintage. Standard.
Rosalía in Dior
I think this is just another vintage repro, but in my favorite silhouette, and when Dior is good I just simply love to enjoy myself. A dream Oscars dress!
Charli XCX in Marni
This is made of “vintage T-shirts from the 50s and 60s.” I have absolutely not one bad to say about it. She was the best dressed of the evening.
Da’vine Joy Randolph in The Gap by Zac Posen
When she and Zac appeared on my screen I gasped. I am in the top percentile of Zac Posen fans (wore Zac Posen for Target to my 7th grade graduation (?)). If you show me denim by an American designer at the Met, generally, I start to foam at the mouth, but this is utterly beautiful from every ideological and compositional angle.
Kendall Jenner in Givenchy
First person to ever wear this dress! Could not make more sense or look better. I love when things make me want to LIVE.
Kim Kardashian in Margiela
Try as you might, you cannot argue with such things.
Doja Cat in Vetements
I’m sorry that I don’t buy the glue gun gimmick and do buy the wet-look gimmick, but the human mind can be complicated when shaped by various social conditions. I was hoping someone would interpret the theme this way and I’m happy it was her.
Ivy Getty in Conner Ives (as of midnight I cannot find an Instagram link of this to save my life)
I have a thing about Conner Ives like I have a thing about Christopher Kane (think they are some of the best of their respective generations). The nails and shoes on a Getty are so incredibly special to me.
Worst:
Taika Waititi in Marni
Disgusting and not an adult.
Demi Moore in Harris Reed:
I try to be nice to and about Harris Reed because they’re very good at making shapes, but how many more times do I have to see this shape?
SJP in Richard Quinn
I like this outfit for a premiere of a season of television and not for the Met Gala. Interpretation of the Ballard story is obvious and dumb. #NSJPH (NO SJP HAT)
Alexandra Daddario in Dior
I’m not sure many people are aware of my utterly irrational distaste for Alexandra Daddario, but I’m happy to unveil that opinion now.
Cynthia Erivo in Thom Browne
Once again I beg you to see: we are under a reign of terror by glue gun.
Chloë Sevigny in Dilara Findikoglu
Magda Butrym, Dilara Findikoglu, Simone Rocha: these are not figures with any real aesthetic might, even if I would like to receive their underwear and swimsuits for free.
Dua Lipa in Marc Jacobs
Frivolity.
Storm Reid in Coach
This is unacceptably depressing.
Amelia Gray in Undercover
Don’t show me this.
Barry Keoghan in Burberry
If, 6 hours ago, you asked me to guess what “Barry Keoghan” would be wearing to the Met Gala, I would basically describe what he did actually end up wearing. That is bad.
VIPs:
Bad Bunny in Margiela
I don’t think this is particularly special, but who would ever look at this and not say, “I love that guy.”
Josh O’Connor in Loewe
I really do not understand the strategy taken to tailor these pants, but the shoes are really–if I am, indeed, able to look beyond my desperate, new, romantic and sexual love for this person, which I believe that I am–excellent.
Nicholas Galitzine in Fendi
When I called this person a hot guy in the past, it was mostly a gesture of goodwill, not anything to do with reality. Now I’m curious about how that might evolve for him and me. This is not an outfit and he called Anne Hathaway “Annie” to La La Anthony.
Matthew Macfadyen (unknown, don’t care)
For more than 20 years this has been one of the hottest living men. With each appearance this becomes more true, except now he is old which adds an entirely different and dangerous complexity. I think his suit is absolutely repulsive.
Jeremy Strong (unknown, don’t care)
This is too crazy for me to even type words about.
Lily Gladstone in Gabriela Hearst
I am overly invested in how okay or badly Lily Gladstone is dressed by people who don’t know what to do with true beauty. I think this is average.
Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin in Miu Miu
These two are married to one another.
Lana Del Rey in McQueen
Nicole Kidman in Balenciaga
Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman have been the world’s best dressed movie stars for 25 years. This is no exception, but it cannot compete with her 2023 look, which demotes this from “best” to “VIP.”
Allison Williams in Michael Kors
There is a short list of celebrities I would feel morally obligated to approach if I saw them in public: Vanessa Hudgens, Lena Dunham, Allison Williams. To each of these women I would say, “you cannot ever fathom the impact you’ve had on me and my generation as an artist and celebrity.” If Allison Williams dressed well, she wouldn’t be Allison Williams.
Elizabeth Debicki in Dior
When Dior is bad, wow is it bad! This is still a 6’3” Australian woman, though.
Sabrina Carpenter in Oscar de la Renta
“Espresso” Songstress at the Met Gala.
Vittoria Ceretti in Alaïa
Are you looking at the words “Vittoria Ceretti” and thinking, “what?”: this is Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend who stuck her hands down his pants on Halloween. She has the same birthday as me yet not as many years to her age. What do you think about that?
i love Tyla sand dress... what did you think of Norwegian salmon billionaire? https://twitter.com/_B_Eshita218_/status/1787691867490103704
What did you think of Queen Z as Tim Burton Johnny Depp?