Every year the MET’s Costume Center – or “The Anna Wintour Costume Center” as it’s going to be called from now on- and Vogue team up to host a gala to celebrate the year’s fashion exhibit and gather funds for the museum. In this single night, everybody who is anybody is called to attend what has become the biggest fashion event of the season. Each year, a different theme inspires the exhibition and this year’s theme was Charles James. For those of you who don’t know, Charles James was a British designer who then moved to America in the late ’20’s and became “America’s First Couturier”. His creations mostly consisted in sculptural and articulated ball gowns and have inspired designers like Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior and, more recently, Zac Posen. In honor of James’s esthetic, this year’s dress code was “white tie” meaning that men had to wear top hat and tails and women ball gowns. I clearly remember complaining about the lack of voluminous ball gowns at the Academy Awards and apparently fashion’s god (a.k.a. Anna Wintour) heard my prayer because at monday night's Met Gala there were ball gowns galore! Arizona Muse, Taylor Swift, Hailee Steinfeld, Emmy Rossum, Claire Danes, Suki Waterhouse and many more braved the infamous MET’s staircase in gorgeous, Jamesesque ball gowns and impossibly long trains, but it was co-chair, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Oscar de la Renta gown that wowed me. Granted, maybe the hair was a tad too much, but the dress was impeccable with its full skirt, signed train and even a touch of Charles James’s iconic Clover Leaf ball gown; besides, you know what they say, go big or go home and SJP definitely went big! If some, like Zac Posen (and myself) were thrilled with this theme, others weren’t so much. When asked what Charles James meant to him, Tom Ford jokingly said “it means big dresses you cannot get close to! Women could not get pregnant in a Charles James dress. I’m serious! I keep trying to kiss these women and it (the dress) makes you automatically bow”. Tom Ford wasn’t the only one to have some difficulties with the dress code. Actresses like Rosamund Pike, Michelle Williams, and Elizabeth Olsen wore short dresses while Cara Delavigne, Kristen Wiig, Amber Valletta and Janelle Monàe opted for more comfortable looks with a touch of drama, choosing to wear pants instead of the required dress. One look that had people talking was for sure Lupita Nyong’o’s breezy netted Prada dress: personally, I didn’t like the dress or the accessories, but Lupita’s attitude was so laid back and happy that it made me like the outfit a little bit more. Between so many amazing looks, it really was a struggle to choose the best ones and, even though I liked many outfits per se – see Emma Stone’s beautiful hot pink Thakoon two-piece dress- I chose the ones that tried to stick to the dress code while still looking incredibly good and adding a little twist to it!

From left : Prabal Gurung, Giles, Matthew Williamson, Chanel, John Galliano, House of Holland

Giorgio Armani

If you think that pink equals girly, fluffy and romantic Tom Ford and Azzaro are going to prove you wrong with short, sleek, sexy dresses and the same are going to do Marc Jacob’s funny and sporty jumpsuit and Armani’s ready-for-work jackets. Of course, there’s also plenty of that fluffy, girly and romantic pink we were talking about in Antonio Berardi’s, Oscar de la Renta’s and Temperley London’s collection and I dare anybody to resist the urge to grab a tiara and play princess once they see Zac Posen’s blush pink ball gowns. I understand that to many of you the idea of wearing head-to-toe pink might be a little, shall we say, unsettling, so, instead of wearing pink clothes, why don’t you start with pink accessories? A pink bag, a scarf, pink shoes or even some pink nail polish are definitely going to do the trick! So, as Maggie Prescott brilliantly put it “I wouldn’t presume to tell a woman what a woman ought to think, but tell her if she’s got to think: think pink”!

It features more than 100 pieces of clothing and accessories that showcase the beauty, richness and, most importantly, glamour of Italian fashion the exhibition that opens tomorrow at the Victoria and Albert Museum of London. Curated by Sonnet Stanfill, the exhibition follows the evolution of Italian fashion through the last seven decades: from the first, iconic catwalk show organized by Giovanni Battista Giorgini in the “Sala Bianca” at Palazzo Pitti, Florence in 1952 -which effectively propelled Italy onto the world stage-