Maxine McCarthyThis year’s MET Gala is sure to be one of fashion’s biggest night’s of the year. The annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute is held on the first Monday in May,
meaning that we are only a few days away from seeing A-list models, celebrities and various stars shine in glorious couture. This year’s theme is Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. The exhibit inside the MET is set to be the gala’s biggest, featuring robes and accessories from the Vatican, as well as designs from CoCo Chanel and John Galiano. This year’s celebrity hosts are sure to dress to impress, as each is a magnificent style icon in their own right. Amal Clooney, Rihanna and Donatella Versace will aid Anna Wintour on one of fashion’s biggest nights.
As an ode to this year’s holy theme, HOLR writer Max McCarthy shared an ethereal story about 48 hours in New York, featuring one famed museum…
I felt blessed to skip my last day of classes not only because I was going to New York City, but because I was escaping the cold for a weekend… or so I thought.
Picture this—the weekend of April 13th Manhattan residents and tourists unalike bear their skin under the heavenly 28 degree weather—as my hometown of Toronto is forced to deal with unearthly Spring flurries. I uploaded my Instagram feed with photos in my pure white short-shorts when I am rudely reminded of my residential reality; Canadian weather. It was divine until Porter airlines sent me an email awakening me from a euphoric like day dream of dresses and sunglasses; IMPORTANT – Flight Change Notification.
Your Porter flight 140 to Toronto has been cancelled. But don’t worry, you’ve been rebooked on the next available flight… 48 hours later.
Not only am I a student, but I am a student who needs to study for final exams, who also chose to not bring my laptop so I could bring a marvellous handbag on the plane; did I fail to mention that I have NO money? But I was in New York, one of the worlds most iconic cities, and there was no way I was about to waste this immaculate mistake. I walked the holy sidewalks of the eternal streets in order to participate in the most affordable high culture the city has to offer—art.
The first time I attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was just shy of my eighteenth birthday venturing through NYC for the first time. I walked the vast sacred halls amongst friends, but found myself continuously wandering off solo, as I sought to consume the works of art alone, reaching my own consensus on how it evoked my emotions. The furthest from interested in discussing aesthetics with others.
Art is a experience which has been tainted by the allowance of technology to absorb the meaning publicly through social media rather than in solitary.
As I sauntered aimlessly around the marble floors I felt an indescribable spiritual connection to my surroundings. In attempt to ignore the flocks of “real” tourists with DSLR cameras, progressing from painting to painting with zero contemplation rather facilitating the production of tangible memories on memory cards, instead of anointing oneself with intellectual stimulation.
I transcended my own perceptions of artistic debate and education I became accustomed to in the various art history courses I have taken within my University career; I memorized art, but I had never devoted my senses to it.
Normally, I would be obsessing over the looming fashion event of the year, as headline after headline contemplates which celebrity will be dawning which designer on the MET steps. But I could not care less. My heart resides in the walls which induced my bodies first heavenly experience…without a costume institute even open.