China Through the Orientalist Looking Glass

This year's Met Gala theme-- China: Through the Looking Glass-- has been the source of great debate. Take a peak through blogger Gordon's glasses to see what he thinks about some of the star's ensembles.

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Sarah Jessica Parker in custom H&M Dress, Philip Treacy hat

Fresh off her win at Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, American Pharoah, [sic] celebrated human actress Sarah Jessica Parker struts her stuff in a black silk dress adorned with those paper poppies that British people wear to remember World War I (see SJP’s starring role in the equine WWI epic War Horse) and what appears to be the Tibetan prayer flags that your cool roommate who’s really “spiritual” got from an Amnesty International vigil. Adding to her jumbled orientalist fantasy is a flaming headdress replete with dangling tassels, a slightly more #culturallysensitive option than her original choice of walking the red carpet with chopsticks in her hair.

On a scale of 1-5 Edward Saids, I give this outfit a 5.

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Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in vintage Dior

Taking a break from their normal Monday ritual of making hair bracelets and posing for post-mortem tintypes, formerly conjoined twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen got down from their widow’s walk in order to slouch across the Met’s red carpet in two stunning examples of Edwardian mourning attire. While the twins channeled Civil War widow realness in Mary Todd Lincoln for Tom Ford at last year’s Met Gala, the two decided to scandalously ditch their bustles and whalebone corsets for these form-fitting numbers that say, "My husband may have died in a trench at Verdun, but you Ver-don’t see me being any less fabulous.”

On a scale of 1-5 Edward Saids, I give these outfits a 1 (maybe they were Boxer Rebellion widows).

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Chloë Sevigny in custom J.W. Anderson.

Remember that time when Emily Dickinson was shanghaied and brought to Singapore to live as a pirate captain’s concubine? Noted polygamist-cum-Opening Ceremony model Chløë Sévîgny sure does. This sexually liberated Belle of Amherst has ditched her high-necked black dresses and modest shawls for this revealing embroidered silk number that shows a level of décolletage unbefitting a bourgeois poetess of her stature. Assembled out of castaway scraps of fabric collected during a trip to the dumpster of Jo-Ann Fabric’s Chinatown branch, Chloë’s bold look makes it clear that this starlet is certainly not a “Nobody!”

On a scale of 1-5 Edward Saids, I would give this outfit a 4.

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