Every year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the Costume Institute Gala, also known as the Met Gala, also known as the Met Ball, also known as The Time Every Year When Vogue Throws A Big Party At The Met And Everyone Is Offended. Last year’s TTEYWVTABPATMAEIO was “China: Through the Looking Glass,” the biggest one yet! And they made a documentary about it! It’s called The First Monday in May.
The trailer promises insights beyond the usual airbrushed fashion-house documentary, and features Anna Wintour, Vogue Director of Special Projects Sylvana Ward Durrett, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton, who is wearing some killer Thom Browne gear throughout. (Who doesn’t love a good cropped pant paired with chunky oxfords, right!?) The discussions seen in the trailer make it evident that the planning committee was not totally oblivious to the risks inherent in making the Met Ball “China” themed, with Wintour saying at some point, “This is just going to look like a Chinese restaurant,” and Bolton acknowledging that much of what they were attempting to execute ran the risk of being racist.
Other highlights from the trailer include André Leon Talley calling the Met Ball the “Super Bowl of social fashion events,” which is an oddly specific thing to be the Super Bowl of. Also, Leatherface devotee Karl Lagerfeld is seen sitting backward on a chair, as all cool dudes do, saying, “What we do is applied art,” but what he really means is that what he does is applying art to certain females who have bodies the size of fit models.
Also, there’s a scene in which an assistant with a very midwestern ponytail hands a cup of coffee to Anna Wintour, who does not slow her gait, not one bit.
This is not the first Vogue-centric documentary. The September Issue, from 2009, told the story of the production of Vogue‘s famed September issue, which is hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages long and responsible for most of the back problems incurred by veteran United States Postal workers.
The First Monday in May will open the Tribeca Film Festival on April 13.