Beneath the carnivorous chandeliers of the Met, or the Mite Gala depending on one’s mood, where every gaze glints like a freshly sharpened blade, Simon Porte Jacquemus appears, draped in white, his arm entwined with that of his grandmother. A tender image, certainly, yet a calculated one, and above all, an image that crackles like a match struck in a room saturated with symbols.

For what, in the end, are we truly looking at? A declaration of filial love, or a deft détourning of nuptial language? White whispers marriage, union, promise. And yet, no husband. No Marco Maestri on the horizon; his silhouette seems to have melted away like sugar dissolving in the golden tea of Gustav Klimt.

And so the question intrudes, insistent, almost impolite: why this absence? Is it an aesthetic choice, a narrative pirouette, or the reflection of a stage more constrained than it appears by the MAGA forces that govern the country?

The Met Gala, that grand opera of appearances, so fond of cloaking itself in the feathers of audacity, might it also harbor acceptable duos and tolerated romances?

Should one see in this grandmother in a white dress a way of sidestepping what still unsettles—a same-sex couple—even within these self-proclaimed temples of progress? To accuse the Met of homophobia would be a weighty gesture, perhaps too hasty, like judging a novel by its cover. Yet to pose the question is already to crack the varnish. Fashion loves to proclaim itself free, but it remains a court, and in every court there are unwritten rules, eloquent silences, absences that weigh more heavily than presences.

One certainty remains, clear as a cold glint beneath the spotlights: this Met Gala, temple of fashion, which invites Simon Porte Jacquemus—neither a couturier in the sacred sense nor a true draughtsman—does not speak my language, does not weave my dreams. And what of Anna Wintour, high priestess without parchment, whose authority hovers like a crown without roots?

So this is no longer a gala. It is a glittering masquerade, a ball where display replaces substance and where, beneath the gilding, fashion itself seems quietly betrayed. The white of the Met here is no longer merely a color.

It is an enigma.

FM