Which 2019 Met Gala exhibition gave the event its theme “Camp: Notes on Fashion”?

The 2019 Met Gala exhibition was titled Camp: Notes on Fashion.

The exhibition explored camp as a mode of exaggerated, theatrical, artificial, humorous, and knowingly excessive expression. Its title referred to Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp,’” which helped bring the concept into wider critical discussion.

The Costume Institute presented historical and contemporary garments to show how camp appears in fashion through irony, exaggeration, parody, theatricality, and deliberate bad taste. The exhibition also connected camp to queer culture and changing ideas of identity and performance.

The theme is sometimes reduced to simply wearing something flashy. The exhibition’s concept was broader: it asked how fashion can turn artifice, exaggeration, and self-awareness into a form of cultural expression.