There were snakes — two of them! — thanks to H.E.R., who wore one coiled around her neck, and Tana Mongeau, the YouTuber who wore hers like a boa (get it? — heh), on the red carpet.
There were big brand names: Versace, which made the safety-pin-patterned Swarovski-covered primary-colored power jacket Taylor Swift wore with thigh-high Christian Louboutin boots (thigh-high boots were a thing) and a teeny-tiny short and bustier look; Balmain, which made the complicated arrangement of strategically placed knots and drapes and wraps modeled by Camila Cabello; Tom Ford, who did the glossy skin-pink trousers worn by Gigi Hadid with an even more flesh-matching corset.
[Six memorable moments from the MTV Video Music Awards.]
There was Marc Jacobs getting the first-ever actual fashion award, and arriving for the occasion in a perfectly tailored but also somehow flowing olive green zoot suit-meets-power suit, and sparkling red Wizard of Oz heels (and giving a shout-out to Prada on Instagram for them). Also a bevy of supermodels dressed in some of his most famous recent looks.
There was nostalgia, thanks to the aforementioned snakes, which had everyone thinking about Britney Spears’s appearance in 2001, and Lil Nas X, whose hedonistic silver-sequined Christian Cowan suit with cream ruffled tux shirt was a nod to Prince, and a best-of performance by Missy Elliott in so many outfits (including one that looked like a giant inflated garbage bag) that she put Katy Perry’s 2017 quick-changes in their place. The ’90s are having a moment, we know.
So why did the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards Monday night feel, at least as far as the fashion went (which, let’s face it, is a big part of the show these days), so deeply uninspiring?
The V.M.A.s have always occupied a singular place in the red carpet calendar: coming at the end of summer after a hiatus between Cannes and the Emmys, and taking place just before the start of the Serious Awards Season — which is also the Serious Marketing Opportunity Season and the spring fashion show season. They have functioned, in recent years, as a sort of system blowout; a chance to break the establishment fashion bonds, embrace the extreme, indulge in a safe space some of the more questionable tendencies in the celebrity aesthetic, and otherwise get everyone ready to do their part for the fashion-fame industrial complex.
As such, it has often been a lot of fun: an explosion of Id, in a world that has become all about the Superego. It’s allowed us all to live a little vicariously, and revel in the space that gave us Joan Rivers, but is largely disappearing: that of bad taste. Taste so bad it was, often, great. Certainly impossible to ignore.
It was a moment to, in fact, say “Feh!” to the whole concept of taste, with all its implications of restraint and politesse.
And there was a bit of that on Monday, to be fair. Lizzo in her red Moschino strapless siren gown emblazoned with the words (duh!) “siren.” Diplo as a floral cowboy. Ava Max as some sort of ersatz Captain Marvel robot. But there wasn’t enough.
Instead, there were the Jonas Brothers in Fendi neutrals. Hey, they’re all married now! They’ve grown up! Which is perfectly fine, but also made the whole thing feel kind of … responsible dads-to-be. Bring back Rick Ross in his all-over-Gucci-GG-just-threw-this-on-to-get-milk coat.
Maybe it was an off year. It was, in general, a kind of noncommittal show, mostly tiptoeing around politics (thought there was some of that, thanks to Ms. Swift, who, in accepting her Video of the Year award for “You Need to Calm Down,” seized the moment to talk up her campaign for the Equality Act) and gossip (though Miley Cyrus also provided a taste of that, with her marriage breakup song “Slide Away” and some new body art). If the clothes were noncommittal, too, that’s a reflection of the times.
It’s such an angry, unsure world right now, maybe no one wants to do anything that could attract a social media mob, including wearing something wacky or potentially controversial.
But after poking fun at such styles for so long, it’s become increasingly clear we will miss them when they are gone — that, in fact, we need them, in the way we need all boundary-pushers.
We need the ridiculous and the profane. We need the sparkles and the fringe and the live animals and the peekaboo and the joy of self-expression unfettered by accepted sartorial parameters. Not to feel superior about our own choices (that’s the lowest common denominator of reactions), but rather to challenge them; to move them, ever so slightly, in a different direction. Some of the best thinking comes after laughter.
The red carpet has become such a playing-it-safe space, we need a dangerous moment. The V.M.A.s used to provide that. Would it will again.
