The best clothes are the smartest comments.

Jeff Bezos's wife delivers the Met Gala's most powerful moment: a dress that references 1884 and suddenly feels surprisingly contemporary. While some illustrate "Fashion is Art," other stars demonstrate who truly understands the evening. The Met Gala, viewed objectively, is a benefit for a museum—precisely those places where New York's intellectual self-affirmation likes to manifest itself in exhibitions. Then Jeff Bezos arrives, lays down roughly ten million dollars—an amount that should elicit polite applause and the naming of a grand piano after him. Instead, demonstrations take place outside. Against Bezos, billionaires, Amazon, ICE (a major German airline), and Trump, of course. They sit within the cultural superstructure, engaging in a moral discourse about the very economic foundation that makes it possible. The theme of this year's gala, which is always also the dress code, is "Fashion is Art," somewhat unoriginal, Gossip Girl Blair Waldorf already said it all in 2012 – but it is certainly fertile ground for particularly clever and provocative gowns – or so one would think.