The 2024 Mess Gala!

The Bianca Censori fashion era has officially begun.

HI!!!!

I hope you all enjoyed fashion’s biggest night whether you were closely analyzing every look that came down that carpet, or ignoring the entire affair altogether in anticipation of my unprofessional analysis. I spent the evening at Caveat doling out my ill-informed opinions on the red carpet in real time over the blare of Vogue’s livestream hosts. While I am most definitely more comfortable hiding behind a screen, I had fun making fun of people during my first foray into on-stage entertainment as a non-comedian, and I hope those readers who joined me for the evening had fun as well. I may or may not be plotting a Mess Live! bonanza for later this year…..

As I mentioned last week, I’m currently in South Carolina visiting my parents, so I’m going to keep things up-top shorter than usual. We also have an absolutely disgusting amount of things to talk about below, so I don’t want to take up too much of your time as Substack tells me I’m currently clocking in at a 35 minute read time. I don’t have much to share about Southern living anyway as all I’ve been doing is floating around in a body of water, endlessly scrolling my social media feeds, and both enjoying and lamenting how hot it is here.

But before we begin, I must share with you that a story I’ve been working on for months for SSENSE finally came out this week, and I would love if you’d all go give it a read! I did a bit of a deep dive into the history of Bravo as a TV network and used that as the framework to explain how its reality shows have come to shape everything about our modern lives, particularly how we present ourselves and consume other people’s content online. Writing this was a real joy and a good reminder that it’s nice to think deeply and critically sometimes!

Mess was also mentioned in the New York Times this week????? Major, if I do say so myself! I don’t even really know what else to say about it as it still feels very surreal for the ranting and raving I do here to be tacitly legitimized by mainstream media in this way. It also seems that pubic hair and celebrity nudity are very much shaping up to be my media legacy and I can’t say I’m mad at it.

Ok, and I know people really do not like when I send out paywalled posts, but alas. As promised, this is going to be one of those. As I am a generous and beneficent thought leader, I’m going to give you all a little taste of my opinions on what transpired on this year’s red carpet and then save the rest of my rabid musings for my beloved patrons. For those who are a paid subscriber, please gird yourselves appropriately as I’m about to unleash roughly 8,000 words of my unbridled opinions regarding the Met Gala upon you. Should I have split this email up into two parts? Indubitably. But I actually need to purge all of these thoughts from my brain immediately because, believe it or not, there’s even more non-Met Gala related unfortunate apparel I need to address with you and I cannot be bogged down by these images for another week. So without further ado.

Let’s goooo!

First of all, I just need to share with you that during my live Met Gala coverage I have never seen an audience turn against someone faster than when I casually shared my opinion that Michael Kors’s fashion designs over the last decade, specifically those ubiquitous tote bags, are proof of the fact that they hate women and want us to look awful. Admittedly, one of my more controversial musings. But while the room may have vehemently disagreed with me, I place before you exhibit A: This custom gown the brand created for Kelsea Ballerini. And I ask, where is the lie???

Also, the blind items are saying that Kelsea’s boyfriend Chase Stokes got his fake tanner on absolutely everything inside this Gala and that is exactly the kind of fun, frivolous information that fuels me.

The number of people who got both completely bamboozled by these AI fashion renderings and were also going nuts over how amazing and haute couture these gowns look is extremely troubling to me. Not only are we completely losing our ability to identify what real human beings in real spaces look like, but we’re also losing any modicum of discernment we were still clinging to. Nothing about these images looks real to me, or aesthetically pleasing for that matter. Perhaps Photoshop has rotted all of our brains because this looks straight up animated. And with each Dall-E rendered suggestion for what these famous people should really be wearing to the Met, I become increasingly convinced that I might be one of the last people on earth with good taste. We need to outlaw this technology and we need to outlaw it now before it brainwashes us all into thinking that Rihanna dressed like a head of cabbage is the height of chic. But now that I just said that, I am going to need someone to wear a Giuseppe Arcimboldo style Mannerist look composed entirely out of fruit and veg ASAP.

I never expected every single one of my trend predictions to be proven correct within a singular garment, but here we are. Aquaria, the winner of Season 10 of RuPaul's Drag Race, demonstrated that my little jokey jokes are truer than I ever could’ve imagined at this Met Gala afterparty. Because not only to we have a brassiere with an underwire made entirely of keys with a necklace to match, but also a faux vagina coin purse similar to the trompe l’oeil one worn by Julia Fox last month. This look is also completely composed out of various layers of sheer, nude hosiery which, as you’ll see below, is alarmingly becoming this year’s fresh take on the extreme nudity trend. While I’m thrilled that everyone famous is finally wearing their compression apparel and getting their circulation right and tight, this granny’s pantyhose aesthetic still leaves much to be desired.

It’s official, you guys. I’m in love. I’ve found my new favorite billionaire of all time and his name is Gustav Magnar Witzøe. Yes, being a billionaire — especially one of the youngest in the world — should be illegal, but at least the Norwegian salmon heir is using his money to be utterly, foolishly fabulous and in that same fishy hue that made him his fortune no less. I need an 8-foot tall printout of this ensemble hanging on my bedroom wall. I need someone to rent out a Times Square billboard so that Gustav can loom large over the unwashed masses. I need statues carved in bronze of this dandy Roman warrior erected in every city in America. My eye keeps bouncing around this image unable to decide which insane detail is my favorite part. I think it’s gotta be the crystalized six-pack abs, but then I wander down to the loin cloth, and again to the bejeweled loafer, and back up to the Marcus Aurelius cape all over again. As Diana Vreeland always said, “the eye has to travel,” and Witzøe has got my eye jet-setting around this ensemble like I’m Taylor Swift right now. Brava!

And just in case you couldn’t take my word for it and needed even more proof that it’s the end of an era, I present to you the death knell of the naked dress. You know things are dire when Emily Ratajkowski showing up in nothing but a Swarovski mosquito net not only didn’t even elicit a double take from spectators, but actually caused people to wonder, “haven’t we seen her wearing this before?” While this gilded spider web gown is completely unremarkable, I am very curious about the underwear situation going on underneath here because I see coverage in the front but not even so much as a PVC strap from the rear. I’m terrified of whatever adhesive strapless undergarment is lurking under all these crystals.