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 How fashion

rediscovered camp

 How fashion rediscovered camp

The theme of this year’s Met Gala, ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’, promises a wholehearted embrace of all things OTT. Ahead of the red carpet extravaganza, Fashion Writer Osman Ahmed explores why camp is back in fashion. 

Set up camp

Backstage, Stella McCartney SS19

You may have noticed that fashion has become rather flamboyant in recent seasons. No, we’re not talking about the eternal swinging between minimalism and maximalism, but rather a more wholehearted embrace of all things OTT. Designers have been dreaming up clothes that leap out of an Instagram timeline and grab your attention; we’re talking acres of smocked tulle, fanciful flights of feathers, dramatic Pierrot ruffles, sculptural shark-fin shoulders and more sparkle than the night sky. In other words, fashion has upped the camp factor, just in time for a major exhibition and the event of the year.

Next week, The Metropolitan of Museum of Art in New York will open its doors to ‘Camp: Notes in Fashion’, an exhibition that takes its cue from cultural critic Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay ‘Notes on Camp’, which helped define and explain a creative movement and sensibility with a 58-point guide. Sontag described the essence of camp as its love of the “unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”

Backstage, Huishan Zhang SS19

 

What could be more camp than an ostentation of celebrities in five-foot-long gowns and Drag Race-worthy make-up?

Backstage, Stella McCartney SS19

 

What could be more camp than an ostentation of celebrities in five-foot-long gowns and Drag Race-worthy make-up?

Backstage, Huishan Zhang SS19

Sontag offers some literal cues for the trend in her essay. “Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers,” she wrote. In which case, look no further than Huishan Zhang’s marabou-trimmed gown. “What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic,” she continues. Well, that could have been an oracular prediction for the proliferation of luxe sportswear and pastiche of mundane everyday items à la Heron Preston.

Where better to go for that than Balenciaga, the luxury nucleus of boot-cut jeans, Lycra bodysuits and clunky ‘dad’ sneakers? It even appears that Virgil Abloh took Sontag’s epithet that “camp sees everything in quotation marks” to heart, putting most of the branding for Off-White, as well the type of garment itself, in quotation marks left, right and centre.

Clothes that up the camp factor

Sontag offers some literal cues for the trend in her essay. “Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers,” she wrote. In which case, look no further than Huishan Zhang’s marabou-trimmed gown. “What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic,” she continues. Well, that could have been an oracular prediction for the proliferation of luxe sportswear and pastiche of mundane everyday items à la Heron Preston. Where better to go for that than Balenciaga, the luxury nucleus of boot-cut jeans, Lycra bodysuits and clunky ‘dad’ sneakers? It even appears that Virgil Abloh took Sontag’s epithet that “camp sees everything in quotation marks” to heart, putting most of the branding for Off-White, as well the type of garment itself, in quotation marks left, right and centre.

Backstage, Christopher Kane SS19

 

In light of polarising politics, camp can be a parody of what’s wrong with society… flipping it on its head with irreverence and irony.    

Of course, with the arrival of the exhibition comes its opening night, which is the year’s most talked-about fashion event. The Met Gala is presided over by Anna Wintour, and this year co-chaired by Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Serena Williams and Alessandro Michele. The red-carpet affair – which has been the platform for increasingly outré outfits such as eight-foot-tall feathered wings, giant headdresses and that yellow opera gown that sparked a million Rihanna memes – will be an extension of the exhibition itself. After all, what could be more camp than an ostentation of celebrities in five-foot-long gowns and Drag Race-worthy make-up? 

Andrew Bolton, the curator responsible for ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’, points out that the aesthetic ideology reaches boiling point at particularly tense socio-political moments. The Eighties was a Golden Age for camp (just think of Joan Collins in ‘Dynasty‘), and very much a reaction to the modernist austerity of the previous decade and divisive Reagan-Thatcher politics. So too were the Thirties (this time, think Marlene Dietrich in ‘Shanghai Express‘) – a time when political extremism was on the rise. “Camp is deeply political and always has been,” says Bolton. “It often surfaces in moments that are heavily politicised and polarising. It challenges the status quo.” 

Bags to turn heads

Andrew Bolton, the curator responsible for ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’, points out that the aesthetic ideology reaches boiling point at particularly tense socio-political moments. The Eighties was a Golden Age for camp (just think of Joan Collins in ‘Dynasty’), and very much a reaction to the modernist austerity of the previous decade and divisive Reagan-Thatcher politics. So too were the Thirties (this time, think Marlene Dietrich in ‘Shanghai Express‘) – a time when political extremism was on the rise. “Camp is deeply political and always has been,” says Bolton. “It often surfaces in moments that are heavily politicised and polarising. It challenges the status quo.” 

Backstage, Peter Pilotto SS19

These are not clothes for shrinking violets. Be warned: heads will turn. But such brash boldness is the joy of camp. It is a self-assured fabulousness that sparks joy not just for oneself, but for the rest of us. Consider Stella McCartney’s glimmering floral-print maxi, Ashish’s glittering pieces or Christopher Kane’s diamanté-strewn lace cocktail dresses. These are the sartorial equivalents to SAD lamps, never failing to elicit a symphony of smiles. Of course, neutrally hued timeless cashmere will always have its place, but when it comes to having good old-fashioned fun, it has to be camp ­– not chic. 

Follow Osman Ahmed on Instagram @osman_ahmed_

Backstage, Ashish SS19

Perhaps the leading arbiter of camp fashion is Jeremy Scott, whose pastiche of American mass consumerism and well-trodden fashion iconography is an irreverent riposte to conventional good taste, beauty and elegance. This season, Scott presented a collection for Moschino that riffed on a dream (or nightmare) that Scott had, in which he was late to his own runway and had nothing but sketches to show. Cue playful ensembles with slapdash scribbles and the put-together styling of the couture shows of yesteryear. In light of polarising politics, camp can be a parody of what’s wrong with society – exaggerated beauty ideals, excessive wealth, traditional notions of gender and identity – flipping it on its head with irreverence and irony.

Backstage, Ashish SS19
Backstage, Moschino SS19

These are not clothes for shrinking violets. Be warned: heads will turn. But such brash boldness is the joy of camp. It is a self-assured fabulousness that sparks joy not just for oneself, but for the rest of us. Consider Stella McCartney’s glimmering floral-print maxi, an Ashish mini-frock with floor-sweeping sleeves or Christopher Kane’s diamanté-strewn lace cocktail dresses. These are the sartorial equivalents to SAD lamps, never failing to elicit a symphony of smiles. Of course, neutrally hued timeless cashmere will always have its place, but when it comes to having good old-fashioned fun, it has to be camp ­– not chic.

Follow Osman Ahmed on Instagram @osman_ahmed_

Attention-grabbing shoes

Set up camp