The theme of this year's Met Gala isn't a brand or a concept, but a person: Karl Lagerfeld. The designer, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 85, was known for his designs for Chanel, Fendi, Chloé and his eponymous brand almost as much as his own celebrity.

Shielded behind sunglasses and pouting in a shirt with a ruffled collar and powdered white ponytail, he uttered bon mots that were by turns whimsical - "Choupette is the Garbo of cats," he once said of his Birman cat - and shocking, even disturbing. In a 2018 interview with European fashion magazine Numéro, for example, he claimed to be "fed up" with the #MeToo movement. "What shocks me the most in all of this are the starlets who took 20 years to remember what happened," Lagerfeld said. "Not to mention the fact that there are no witnesses to the accusation."

In the same interview, he complained about new guidelines that could ensure the safety of models on set. "If you don't want your pants pulled down, don't become a model! Join a nunnery, there's always a place for you there. They even hire new people!"

He expressed his derision of fat women, calling Adele "a bit too fat" in 2012 (he apologized shortly after) and saying "in a 2009 interview with German magazine Focus that "nobody wants to see plus-size models.' "There are fat moms sitting in front of the TV with their bags of French fries saying that skinny models are ugly," he said.

In 2017, he made a bizarre connection between the Holocaust and Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open German borders to Syrian refugees. "You can't - even if decades intervene - kill millions of Jews so that you can put millions of their worst enemies in their place," he said on a French talk show, adding that a German friend took in a Syrian and said a few days later, "'The greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust.'"

His notoriety for such remarks won't be on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit.

In a recent interview on "The Business of Fashion Podcast," curator Andrew Bolton said he wanted to highlight Lagerfeld's work and creativity, as well as his status as an original multihyphenate designer who would inspire Virgil Abloh and Kanye West.

"That's one of the reasons we wanted to focus on the work rather than the words or the man," Bolton said. "Because, yes, he was problematic. There were things he said that were difficult, yes. And, again, did he mean it? Or was it a distraction? I don't know, it's hard to know."

Lagerfeld had a reputation for concealing even the simplest facts of his life, such as the year and place of his birth. "And I thought the only thing that was authentic," Bolton said, "the only thing that was real and tangible was his output, his creative output."

Like many celebrities, Lagerfeld was known to many but intimately acquainted with few. He had a habit of parting ways with close friends without notice or justification. But one of his near-lifelong best friends was Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, who has hosted and organized the gala and its accompanying exhibition for some two decades. And that either complicates or soothes a simmering controversy over Lagerfeld's legacy ahead of Monday's event, considered the fashion industry's Super Bowl.

In an Instagram post in October, a day after Lagerfeld was announced as the subject, actress Jameela Jamil shared a series of Lagerfeld's offensive words, writing that Lagerfeld "has used his platform [in] such a clearly hateful way, mainly towards women. ... Why is THIS the one we celebrate when there are so many AMAZING designers out there who aren't bigoted white men?"

In April, the HF Twitter Met Gala (HFTMG), an international group of 20-something fashion fanatics who organize social media programs around the gala, tweeted that it would forgo celebrating this year's event "because our values don't align with the selection of Karl Lagerfeld as the theme." (The group isn't affiliated with Vogue, though the magazine has written positively about its efforts in the past.)

"I think that everything Karl represented is something that we're all generally very strong against," said Senam Attipoe, 23, one of the organizers of the HFTMG account. "We value democratization. He valued exclusivity, and he's proven that throughout his career. And we value inclusivity and creativity. He valued celebrity, and we value self-promotion."

Lagerfeld's supporters say the designer's comments overshadow his artistic and intellectual achievements.

William Middleton, a veteran style journalist who distributed a conclusive history of Lagerfeld in February, said that the people who have one or two glaring misgivings about observing Lagerfeld ought to "choose if they feel that the 85 years of everyday routine that this individual experienced and the 65-year vocation, assuming it's reasonable to judge both of those by this about six or 10 or dozen remarks that were made throughout the long term. Assuming they think in the wake of learning about his life, that those remarks really do characterize him, that is unquestionably their decision. In any case, I don't believe that they do."

In any case, the craving to stay away from discussion around Lagerfeld's dubious words stretches out past the walls of the Met. Those expecting to peruse the article in Numéro need to depend on statements in Middleton's book and somewhere else; the article was taken out some time in late 2020, one of the HFTMG coordinators saw while she was exploring Lagerfeld. Numéro supervisor Philip Utz didn't answer to a solicitation for input.

"I'm truly keen on perceiving how these individuals — like these famous people — how their fans will respond," said Aida Pehlic, 22, one more of the HFTMG's coordinators.

Planners make compromises to dress a star for an entertainment expo, frequently improving on their work. Be that as it may, at the Met Celebration, distinction is helpless before design's luxury, bringing us Rihanna wearing a yellow dress with an extensive train, by Chinese couturier Guo Pei, and Katy Perry dressed, by Jeremy Scott, as a light fixture.

What was once a dusty society occasion sent off during the 1940s to fund-raise for the Ensemble Organization, the main division at the Met that is self-financed, is currently a $50,000-per-individual scene designed for greatest virality.

The air of superstar, and the feeling that the visitors frequently appear to be costumed as opposed to in mold, makes a sensation of out and out festival. Also, in style, festivity frequently implies artificially glamorizing, in a real sense or metaphorically.

For the HFTMG, the reality Lagerfeld's debates go unmentioned in the display that disturbs the gathering most. "I feel that is somewhat of an extremely uncalled for prologue to him, since dislike, 'Goodness, his plan profession is to the left, and afterward his tricky history is to the right,'" said Rebeca Spitz, 23. "This entrapped thing occurred over a progression of years, and it's totally integrated into his profession and heritage."

There isn't anything intrinsically sexist or racist about Lagerfeld's genuine work. Regardless, Lagerfeld's articles of clothing are Pollyannaish contrasted and crafted by architects like John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Claude Montana. However, seeing Lagerfeld's imagined persona however similarly as critical a creation as his clothes may be likewise conceivable.

Like Bolton, Middleton focuses to Lagerfeld's affinity to lie, misrepresent and reexamine himself. "I feel that Karl's cruelty was performative," Middleton affirmed. "He fostered a persona." He would once in a while allude to himself as "the puppet."

He was additionally conflicting in his remarks, it was handily different to recommend serious areas of strength for him. A year after he excused larger size ladies, he captured one for V Magazine, and he let Bad habit know the amount he cherished seeing figures, for example, Beth Same in design.

His central quality as a planner, Alicia Drake wrote in her 2006 narrative of Lagerfeld's competition with Yves Holy person Laurent, was what he called "vampirizing." "Karl could hit upon a pattern," Drake expressed, "draw it and afterward three weeks after the fact launch it mercilessly from his scholarly framework and give to the new, the following."

During her residency at Vogue, she plays developed the part of proofreader in boss into something like a representative for style writ enormous, assisting with working with a spot for originator garments inside mainstream society. Style leaders counsel her while employing inventive chiefs, and she frequently proposes names to them or even representatives bargains among brands and creators.

With that, she frequently advocate architects who are entangled in embarrassment. At the point when Galliano was terminated from his job at Dior in 2011 after film was distributed of the originator on a medication powered xenophobic tirade, he looked for Wintour's guidance. In 2013, Wintour organized a residency for Galliano at Oscar de la Renta, and the Met put Galliano's work for Dior in the 2014 Chinese-themed Met Occasion, utilizing a 2003 dress of his to report the presentation. At the point when he handled the central job at Maison Margiela in October 2014, Wintour was among quick to wear his plans, as he gave her the remarkable accomplishment grant at the English Design Grants that December.

Her endeavors in this field have expanded of late. In a New Yorker profile, Balenciaga originator Demna said that Wintour was one of two individuals to call him after the web ejected into a paranoid idea filled takedown of the brand for its portrayal of kids gripping plush toys in calfskin saddles and the appearance in a different promotion of records from a court administering safeguarding kid sexual entertainment. She additionally distributed the main meeting with the creator following the aftermath. Alexander Wang, who was blamed in late 2020 for tranquilizing and physically attacking individuals, then in 2021 met with a few of the informers and apologized, organized a rebound show in February that various distributions recoiled from covering. Wintour sat in the first column.

What's more, Daniel Lee, the Bottega Veneta planner who bafflingly left his post in late 2021 in the midst of a rash of bits of hearsay, was delegated to Burberry under a year after the fact. (A style essayist and force to be reckoned with situated in Paris, Louis Pisano, claimed on Twitter, in a now-erased tweet, that Lee had utilized the n-word in a gathering, an allegation that Kering denied in an answer.) Wintour distributed a profile of Lee before he showed his most memorable assortment wherein he momentarily tended to the contention; she likewise facilitated a supper in her Greenwich Town condo to praise the arrangement, welcoming various youthful New York originators, models and editors. Lee wasn't just welcome once again into the Condé Nast overlay, yet into the New York design local area at large.

To put it obtusely, Vogue needs promoting income from style brands to support itself. Yet, a position places her in struggle with a more youthful age of design fans that isn't so able to forgive and never look back.

This is seemingly Wintour taking a more nuanced position: that an individual's offenses shouldn't characterize the extent of their profession. Style is particularly very much arranged to the possibility that the workmanship, figuratively speaking, can't be isolated from the craftsman, provided the reality with that irreconcilable circumstances are basically the medium's life blood. Enticement and want are two of its basic standards.

This is seemingly Wintour taking a more nuanced position: that an individual's offenses shouldn't characterize the extent of their profession. Style is particularly all around arranged to the possibility that the craftsmanship, in a manner of speaking, can't be isolated from the craftsman, provided the reality with that irreconcilable situations are basically the medium's life blood. Temptation and want are two of its central standards.

The #MeToo development drove various picture takers, like Bruce Weber, Patrick Demarchelier and Mario Testino, to quit working, and another age of photographic artists, and the arising planners who are much of the time more different than their ancestors, has guaranteed that self-articulation is currently design's first reason.

That, obviously, and bringing in cash.