The First Mon­day in May

Can fash­ion be viewed as art? That’s the ques­tion at the cen­tre of Andrew Rossi’s doc­u­men­tary, the title of which refers to the annu­al event when New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art clos­es to host the Met Gala, a star-stud­ded fundrais­er cel­e­brat­ing the open­ing of a spe­cial exhi­bi­tion by its Cos­tume Insti­tute. The exhi­bi­tion in focus is ​‘Chi­na: Through the Look­ing Glass’, which aims to explore the country’s influ­ence on West­ern fash­ion design­ers. Its cura­tor, Andrew Bolton, acknowl­edges that crit­ics may dis­par­age its engage­ment with Chi­na as ​“inau­then­tic”, but ulti­mate­ly argues on behalf of the ​“extra­or­di­nary imag­i­na­tion” of the fash­ion industry.

Yet, it’s this empha­sis on imag­i­na­tion that makes the depic­tion of Chi­na so prob­lem­at­ic. Instead of engag­ing with a very real and increas­ing­ly mod­ern Chi­na, the exhi­bi­tion is only inter­est­ed in the Ori­en­tal­ist ​“fan­ta­sy” of its past – a ten­den­cy that’s con­front­ed in an awk­ward scene with a Chi­nese jour­nal­ist who accus­es Bolton’s exhi­bi­tion of dan­ger­ous­ly omit­ting the mod­ern real­i­ties of her home­land. It speaks vol­umes that Met Gala organ­is­er Anna Wintour’s only response is to whis­per snark­i­ly to Bolton that, ​“She just wants every­thing to start in 1949.”

It’s con­flict like this that undoubt­ed­ly makes for the most inter­est­ing moments in an oth­er­wise bland film. Just as Bolton and co fail to address the con­cerns of their Chi­nese crit­ics in a polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive way, so do the film­mak­ers in hold­ing their sub­jects to account for it. Fash­ion is all about brush­ing over things; about won­der­ing at the beau­ti­ful exte­ri­or while refus­ing to con­front the myr­i­ad com­plex­i­ties – and at times ugli­ness – that lies beneath. Yes fash­ion may be beau­ti­ful, but it’s all aes­thet­ic, a pop star smil­ing into a sea of flash­ing cam­eras with dead, emp­ty eyes.