Pope Rihanna, and Other Revelations from the Catholic-Themed 2018 Met Gala | 1 News Day, breaking news, sport, business, politics, Science & Health

Rihanna wearing an ornate, beaded white Margiela corset dress with a matching jacket, clutch, and mitre.

Photograph by Kevin Mazur / MG18 / Getty

It is no surprise that Monday night’s Met Gala was one of the most satisfying in years. Dressing to this year’s theme—officially the Eucharist, but better summed up by the title of the Costume Institute’s new exhibit, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”—was a far less complex assignment than that of the 2017 event, which celebrated the (often challenging, conceptual) work of Comme des Garçons’ visionary designer Rei Kawakubo; and it was less thorny to navigate than the theme two years before that, which explored Western designers’ fascination with China and led to more than one moment of uncomfortable cultural appropriation on the red carpet. Although some true believers may have expressed displeasure on social media about this year’s conflation of Church and high fashion, the Catholic Church itself is a partner in the Met’s exhibition, lending more than forty papal vestments from the Vatican (a first for the notoriously secretive archive). Cardinal Timothy Dolan agreed not only to sanction the gala but to attend it; the entire event had the feel of the officially anointed. And so many celebrities felt free to experiment, knowing that the only heresy they’d be convicted of would be crimes against fashion.

Alessandro Michele, the Gucci designer, pictured left, with Lana Del Rey and Jared Leto, whom he dressed for the evening.

Photograph by Kevin Mazur / MG18 / Getty

Rihanna, one of the co-chairs of the gala, is the rare star who has never committed a sartorial misstep at the event (or perhaps in her whole life). She arrived early in the evening and appointed herself the head of the couture congregation, wearing an ornate, beaded white Margiela corset dress with a matching jacket, clutch, and mitre—also known as the hat that the Pope wears. (On Twitter, she was immediately crowned a nouveau papess, a leader whose benedictions come in the form of ten-minute makeup tutorials.) Subsequent guests arrived to fill out her makeshift Vatican City. There was Nicki Minaj, wearing a miles-long Oscar de la Renta gown in cardinal red. There was Greta Gerwig, in a black-and-white gown by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s label the Row, looking like Maria von Trapp before she fled the convent. Sarah Jessica Parker, always the kooky reverend mother of this party, wore a Dolce & Gabbana spectacle of gold brocade and crimson hearts with a six-foot train, complete with a tall fascinator in the shape of a gazebo that featured the entire Nativity scene. (I must mention here that I seem to have conjured this headpiece from thin air in my own fantasy Met Ball betting pool.) And Jared Leto, of course, cast himself as an eccentric Jesus, in a floor-length liturgical stole and a golden crown of thorns—he was part of the “Gucci gang” on the carpet, which also included Lana Del Rey, wearing a halo of blue parrot feathers and the stabbed heart of the Virgen Dolorosa.

There were many other divine moments. Madonna, who performed at the party and might be considered the spiritual center of the gala, for her decades of mixing ecclesiastical and pop iconography, showed up in Gothic Gaultier. Katy Perry rode up to the event in a vintage roadster, wearing huge Versace wings, as if she were doing a one-woman Off Broadway “Angels in America.” Cardi B, now well into her pregnancy, looked both sacred and profane in an elaborate Elizabethan headdress and a gown with a thigh-high slit. The young actress and singer Zendaya showed up as Joan of Arc, sporting a short crimson bob and a Versace marvel made of fine pewter ortolan with plates of delicate hammered armor at the waist and shoulders. There were some less successful invocations of the French martyr throughout the night, and a gratuitous use of chain mail—Olivia Munn, in a custom H & M dress complete with a Monty Python-esque chain-mail coif, was the only guest who went full Crusades—but Zendaya’s rendition radiated both strength and risk. More of the male guests, by contrast, played it safe, in velvet or pastel blazers better fit for Sunday services than for fashion’s biggest night of the year. Chadwick Boseman, the star of “Black Panther,” however, made a convincing Young Pope, wearing a sharp all-white Versace ensemble with elephantine bejewelled crosses on the lapels, scrollwork on the pants, and a pair of bronzed slippers.

Cardi B in Moschino.

Photograph by Ray Tamarra / GC / Getty

There are always some followers who veer from the path. The Met Ball issues no requirement that guests adhere to the theme; those who don’t, such as a plainly suited Mitt and Ann Romney, tend to stick out like flatulence at church. The main—underwhelming—trend of the night was a simple column gown with a halo, the safest way to be fashionably angelic. Still, for every tentative look, there was a bold swerve; the evening felt like a triumph for fashion insofar as, at least in the corners of the Internet that I occupy, it had many people glued to their screens out of glee, fascination, and a kind of hushed reverence for the clothes.

Perhaps it was the fact that Cardinal Dolan was present, but few attendees dared to subvert or challenge the Church itself. The one exception was the comedian and showrunner Lena Waithe, who donned a rainbow-striped dream cape over a black suit (both by Carolina Herrera)—a sign of pride and, undoubtedly, a critique of the Church’s attitude toward the L.G.B.T. community. Waithe seemed to carry the heavy mantle of statement dressing on her own, and one was left with the sense that other opportunities to provoke were missed: Where was the fetish wear, the mortifications of whips and chains, or the stigmata, or even the cephalophore? (I was dismayed that no one carried a replica of her own head, à la Gucci’s fall/winter 2018 runway show.)

Inside the Costume Institute, the exhibition is a compendium of elegant and dramatic gowns that show their creators playing with the symbols of the Catholic faith—many of the featured designers in the show, such as Gianni Versace, John Galliano, and Christian Lacroix, were raised in the Church. It is clear, walking through the darkened hallways of the Byzantine gallery as chamber music swells overhead, that the purpose of the exhibition is to highlight the beauty of Catholicism, its lavish adornments, the dazzling enchantments that its devotees enjoy. The show, as thrilling as it is to behold—a Christian Lacroix bridal gown adorned with gold leaf and decaying rosettes is presented as a revelation, in a single beam of light, as if viewed through stained glass—is more interested in pomp than in reflection, but, then, the same is true of the average Met Ball. In his opening remarks about the exhibition earlier in the day, the curator, Andrew Bolton, read a quote about the glittering parochial imagination which could double as a definition of celebrity: Catholics, he declared, “live in an enchanted world.”