‘First Monday’ wants you to think about art, fashion

Singer Rihanna arrives at the Met Gala, subject of the documentary, “The First Monday in May.”

Courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes

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Singer Rihanna arrives at the Met Gala, subject of the documentary, “The First Monday in May.”

Courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about parties attended by A-list celebrities and millionaires? Yeah, me neither. And yet, the documentary “The First Monday in May,” which chronicles the planning and execution of the 2015 Met Gala is quite compelling.

Every year, on the first Monday in May, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hosts a fundraising gala that doubles as the grand opening of the annual fashion exhibit of the museum’s Costume Institute. Famous people wearing haute couture attend, look at art and have a very expensive party. The antics of the celebrities might interest some people, but luckily for the rest of us, they’re not the focus of the documentary.

Rather, “The First Monday in May” illustrates the work that goes into planning the gala and the art exhibition that it kicks off. It turns out that the Costume Institute is sort of the black sheep of the museum. Quite a few people, even at the Met, refuse to classify fashion as art. The film kicks off with fashion and art experts discussing their views on the subject, but after watching the way director Andrew Rossi captures the elegance and creativity of the clothing on display, it’s clear what he wants us to think.

The film also profiles the people behind the scenes at the gala. Curator Andrew Bolton emerges as a sort of protagonist of the film, but Anna Wintour, the editor and chief of Vogue and the chairwoman of the gala, steals every scene she’s in. In general, the media tend to portray Wintour as emotionally distant at best and as a tyrannical despot at worst (Miranda Priestly, the villain of The Devil Wears Prada, is allegedly based on Wintour). But in “The First Monday in May,” Wintour comes off as surprisingly human – just a woman who wants to put together a really nice party to raise a lot of money for her favorite museum.

“The First Monday in May” has a dark side, though. The particular gala it documents was titled “China: Through the Looking Glass,” and was themed around the influence of Chinese art on Western fashion. The gala planners point to Western, sometimes stereotypical depictions of China as their primary influence, rather than China itself. An argument can be made that Wintour and Co. are reinforcing colonial attitudes toward Asia even as journalists and the exhibition’s artistic director try to point out the obvious problems with that.

Regardless, “The First Monday in May,” is more thought-provoking than any documentary about a fashion industry party has any right to be.

ngonzales@durangoherald.com. Nick Gonzales is one of The Durango Herald newsroom’s resident film buffs. He welcomes movie recommendations. Follow him on Twitter @lackingzones.