If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Read It

And so to the Met Gala – or at least, to slagging it off. You would hope after a two year hiatus (2020’s was cancelled, 2021’s severely scaled down) that people would pull up a ringside seat and enjoy the spectacle of fashion’s self-styled most glamorous night of the year. Turns out we haven’t missed red-carpet events nearly as much as we’ve missed criticising them. According to many, the egotism and excesses of the Met Gala are an affront to the war, an affront to poverty and “a poor taste, hideous freak show that confirms we are living in an utterly vacuous world”, according to one reader posting in the comments section of a broadsheet.

Media outlets will continue to cover the Met Gala because the pictures look great and it’s of significant cultural interest.

If you don’t like it, don’t read it. PRs should be similarly unapologetic, albeit sensitive. Yes, it’s tough promoting luxury as the UK teeters on recession, but should the PRs for Tiffany, Cartier and Bulgari stop communicating the details of the precious jewels their clients wore? No. Like the gowns on the red carpet, these rare jewels provide fantasy and escapism. However ugly world events continue to be, we all need a little beauty.