God Save the Preen: Dressing for the Met Ball

I've been reading with bemusement about frustrated fashionable ladies (along with a fashion writer or two) who cannot fathom how to dress for tomorrow's Costume Institute Ball at the Met: Punk: Chaos to Couture.

In a NYT article linked above, Cameron Silver, owner of the LA-based vintage shop Decades, said: “Not that many women want to look like Nancy Spungen.”

For the record, Nancy Spungen had her sartorial limits too.  In a scene from the film Sid and Nancy, she shoves on Sid's mother's clothes and storms out of the house after a violent confrontation.  When she sees her image reflected in a window, she gazes upon herself in horror and shrieks, "AGGHH!!  Siiid!  I look like F*$#^@% Stevie Nicks in hippie clothes!"

But back to the Met.  If I were going, I'd wear the Alexander McQueen confection above.  I'd ask Philip Treacy to make me a headpiece, perhaps something resembling a crown fashioned from wire and royal blue silk, which I'd wear atop my bird's-nest-inspired topknot. Easy peasy, right?

And just a note about the title of this post: probably all my gentle readers know that it refers to the 1977 song "God Save the Queen," screeched by the Sex Pistols during the year of Queen Elizabeth's silver jubilee.

Maybe my title's a tad irreverent, but someone's gotta celebrate the "pun" in "punk."

See you after the ball.