Three Queer History Nods at Last Night's Met Gala
Its 2020 iteration was another casualty of the pandemic, but on Monday night, the Met Gala was back in full force.
Various A-listers and countless creatives vied for the most audacious look reflecting the theme of the museum’s latest costume exhibition: “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,
In comments to reporters on the night, Vogue editor and the face of the Met Gala, Anna Wintour, said:
Seventy percent of the exhibition represents the future of American fashion.
But the past was reverberating on the carpet as well, as evidenced by three LGBTQ attendees.
Dan Levy.
The Schitt’s Creek star paid homage to legendary AIDS activist and confrontational artist David Wojnarowicz.
His clutch featured an untitled 1990 piece from Wojnarowicz, known now as “One Day This Kid…”
Wojnarowicz moved to New York in the late 60s with his mother after his parents’ divorce. After working as a hustler for a number of years, he began experimenting with art and the burgeoning avant-garde movement of the 70s.
It was the AIDS crisis and the countless friends Wojnarowicz lost that injected his artwork with a political, unapologetic urgency.
He died of the disease in 1992, but his work continues to generate controversy well into the 21st century.
Elliot Page
In his most high-profile appearance since coming out as transgender last December, Juno star Elliot Page featured a subtle nod to one of the queer greats in his ensemble.
Page’s boutonnière was the traditional rose, except it was green, likely a nod to the green carnation popularized by the iconic playwright Oscar Wilde.
According to Oscar Wilde Tours:
In 1892, Wilde had one of the actors in Lady Windermere’s Fan wear a green carnation on opening night and told a dozen of his young followers to wear them too. Soon the carnation became an emblem of Wilde and his group[.]
Though Wilde never admitted it outright, the green carnation was likely a subtle way of declaring one’s sexuality to those in the know.
For his part, when asked what the carnation meant, Wilde said:
Nothing whatever, but that is just what nobody will guess.
Hints like these would carry over worldwide, well into the mid-20th century. The hanky code would allow Queer people to not only announce their Queerness, but their kinks as well. Cruising cues, such as asking for a cigarette light, would initiate sexual contact in a covert way.
NikkieTutorials
YouTuber NikkieTutorials, who came out as trans early last year, paid homage to the Saint of Christopher Street: Black trans icon Marsha P. Johnson.
Before her activism helped bring the LGBT rights movement into its modern era, Marsha frequently grappled with homelessness.
She would often spend nights under the tables of florist shops on Christopher Street, where she would collect discarded flower bulbs to create elaborate crowns for use in performance pieces and everyday grandeur.
NikkieTutorials said of her Met look:
I knew I wanted to pay homage to a trans icon who was at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots… Marsha P. Johnson paved the way for so many of us, and I hope I made my community proud tonight.
Kudos to these attendees, who reminded spectators that there is no American fashion without Queerness and the innovation that comes with it.