For weeks now, a timer on the Vogue website has been ticking off the seconds, the anticipation within the fashion world bursting at the seams. But finally: the 2024 Met Gala is here.
There is, however, something different about this evening’s show. The Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”, focuses on 50 historical pieces from its collection that are too fragile to be worn again. So far, so haute couture. But while the dress code for the Gala follows the same logic, it also takes inspiration from an unlikely source: guests are invited to take their lead from “The Garden of Time”, a 1962 short story by J. G. Ballard.
It is impossible as a Ballard fan not to be excited by this unexpected turn of events. One imagines that it would have delighted such a close student of contemporary culture and keen analyst of celebrity. And, though hardly a style icon (he dressed generally like the Surrey dad he was), Ballard took fashion seriously. In his autobiography, Miracles of Life, Ballard praised the social revolution of the Sixties for, among other things, “the use of fashion as a political weapon” (as well as for “the youth cults and drug culture”).
Nor is this the first time the fashion world has taken an interest in Jimmy’s work. In fact, he contributed to British Vogue himself twice in the late Seventies. During that period, Vogue employed a literary editor, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, and Ballard, seen as something of a provocateur following his “urban disaster” trilogy of novels (Crash, Concrete Island and High-Rise), was well-connected in literary circles. The resulting collaborations, “The Future of the Future” and “The Diary of a Mad Space Wife”, were speculative futurological pieces, containing the vivid insights for which he continues to be renowned, alongside some predictive misses.
So, the recreation of Ballard in the unlikely guise of a fashion guru is a cause for considerable celebration. But how might those lucky enough to attend the Gala respond to the theme? If you’re on the list and need some last-minute inspiration, read on. You’ll want to be fully Ballard-conversant, so scroll down for the deep-cut style tips. (A shortcut for anyone wanting to pay tribute to the man himself: think gin o’clock vibes — cream linen suit and striped shirt — and you won’t go far wrong.)
The obvious place to start is the story itself. “The Garden of Time” imagines an aristocratic couple, Count Axel and his wife the Countess, living a life of luxurious leisure in a beautiful villa with terraced gardens nearby a lake. While they spend their days in the library, or drawing room, reading rare volumes and playing Bach on the harpsichord, a mob approaches across the plain beyond the low garden walls: “a vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers in ragged uniforms, pressing forward in a disorganised tide”. By picking the time flowers in their garden, the Count and Countess can turn back the clock for the period of time it takes for a bloom to shed its petals. The time flowers, though, are running out, and the mob draws ever closer. On the night the Countess picks the final bloom the mob flood over the wall to discover two stone statues in the garden.
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Subscribe“As parts of the planet become uninhabitable…”
Do we have a link for this claim? And if so, does it take account of the fact that large parts of the planet have always been uninhabitable but that this trend is actually reversing in many places?
That completely derailed me as well. I couldn’t stop thinking about how you can measure in satellite imagery how an amount of land equivalent to the size of the US has greened thanks to climate conditions in recent past.
A nostalgic piece for when dystopian thoughts were acts of imagination that were often intriguing and playful. When, despite major differences on how to get there, there was a consensus of sorts on the values a community should aspire to and frequently a desire to balance the two sides – the aspiration to explore individuality and its impact on the well-being of others. Can we please go back to such times?
The images from the Met Gala have always left me thinking ‘it’s like pre-revolution Versailles, they’re asking for it’. Maybe this year they have lost their heads and have dropped the subtleties!
Ballard was an extraordinary writer. Described as a Surrealist by some, his ability to get under one’s skin is unique. As this piece says, his ambiguity is what sets him apart. No statements, ideology – he’s far too clever for that. Read him a lot in my 20s and have dipped into occasionally since. Time for a re-read.
True. I have a copy of his collected short stories – I think it needs to be pushed to the top of my “to read” pile! So much great writing, so little time.
In the future they going do crash theme party.driving each other crazy .in the met.cronenberg did fantastic job
How about some leather bomber jackets like the street thugs in Super Cannes? like Woodrow Wilson’s own Blue Eagle SA Left wing enforcers.
That would be apposite
‘As parts of the planet become uninhabitable, and the movement of people across the globe breeds new conflicts, the super-rich are noticeably retreating to islands, gated communities, and the bunkers on their New Zealand estates.’
Hilarious. Who exactly is ‘noticing’ this Mark? I think it might just be you mate. Have you tried St John Wort?
The article is unreadable
Perhaps it’s because you have not read much Ballard?
Thank goodness…
And next year, presumably, William Burroughs Naked Lunch.
When I was an SF fan (30 years ago), Ballard was an amazing phenom. His stories had the air of the end of time, similar to some of Jack Vance’s stories (Last Castle). Ballard had the added element of weird perverse sex.
The nominally Irish-American writer of Hunger Games predicted the Democrat aristocracy of the future. Sure enough, they quickly became transhuman on the gender medical complex and state euthanasia. I think of her as the polite embodiment of the forces that would congeal in Republican populism and so a mirror of the paranoid liberalism of Margaret Atwood. Both presented literary simulacrum that challenge the simulation that is American culture to hit the accelerator further in realising dystopia in real-time.