I started writing this some time ago, just as a reflection on the genre of fashion memes and their evolution in the last decade and a half. Then the 2025 Met Gala happened, with its “Tailored for You” dress code inspired by a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, called Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, and I had to recalibrate. 

The Met Gala, specifically its red carpet, has become the clearest mirror of the current state of the popular fashion imagination. As other red carpet mainstays like the VMAs and EMAs faded into irrelevance, the Met Gala took their place as the preeminent fashion walk-through. (Fashion weeks are a close second; they still feel too insular, too insider.)

More than just a style showcase, the Met Gala also mirrors the speed at which we now consume, judge and emotionally process images. This is largely thanks to its deep entanglement with meme culture, which the Met Gala has come to wield as a form of soft cultural power. It doesn’t just show fashion – it becomes the discourse. 

During the red carpet golden era – the 1990s Oscars, with Armani’s domination, documented beautifully in System magazine’s “Entertainment” issue – things moved slower. Attendees weren’t as media-trained, Joan Rivers was must-watch TV and the outfits weren’t instantly archived or recycled online. You saw them live, or you didn’t. Scarcity of information – what a time to be alive. The outfit would become inseparable from the person, shaping their media legacy.

The residue of any fashion faux pas was dramatic and lasting. Yet the meme was not there to make any fail into an everlasting fashion trope, to be regurgitated yearly, as a countdown to the event itself. 

Fast forward to 2013. The Met Gala’s theme: “Punk: Chaos to Couture”. Instagram is three years old; the timeline is still chronological, the platform is still ad-free. Kim Kardashian is pregnant and wears a floral Givenchy dress – instantly christened “the couch dress.” This iconic outfit shifts the idea of basicness and conceptual fashion. But most importantly, it is meme-ed.

This is the pivot: post-event memeing becomes its own genre. Not just commentary, but creative participation – the era of observations and silly jokes, camaraderie and elaborate photoshop collages, bad pans and uninhibited-ness. The Gala opens to the public not through access but through shared online language. It finally entered the chat.

From a private, elite event, with seldom paparazzi coverage, the Met Gala’s cultural transmission became global by speaking both fashion and meme. It became less about who’s invited and more about how the moment is interpreted. Bringing attention to the Met Gala did not intend mockery, perhaps. But is there a mode of fashion appreciation without judgement? 

Then comes the shift: memes not after the fact, but during.