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guten morgen everyone from grey new york

congratulations to all the people working in and around fashion who hustled so hard to create a beautiful moment yesterday, the assistants, photographers, editors, interns, publicists, catering and hospitality workers, videographers, red carpet interviewers, hair and makeup artists, security, I hope you are so proud and relieved it’s over lol.

I wrote a text for vogue germany about attending the highly exclusive met press preview last morning, and I just put it through google translate for you down below. however before you read, I’m going to need everyone to click on the link so that we spike their website and get booked again! I am girlbossing a little close to the sun but I feel like how else would i make use of having already 2.4k subscribers on here!!!!!!! so everyone be a good subscriber and click and scroll down to see me and some of my favourite people at the met :) the costume institute raised a record breaking 31 million this year, and this is your version of charity work.

https://www.vogue.de/galerie/met-ausstellung-superfine-brenda-weischer-erfahrung

don’t lie to me, I know you didn’t open it. traitor!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you <3

ok so here is what translation says I wrote, mind you I didn’t fact check this. it might have some things in there that were edited out. I will also be recording brendawareness episode on everything hopefully later today, but now I have pilates lol

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It’s exactly 5 PM and I’m starting to type this text just as the first stars begin arriving on the blue carpet of this year’s Met Gala. In the background, I’ve got Vogue’s YouTube livestream playing on my phone. The spectacle is unfolding just 6 kilometers north of me, it’s pouring rain in New York, and I’m glad to be sitting on my downtown couch.

It’s the biggest night of the year for fashion, but the most exciting part of the first Monday in May for me personally always happens at 9 AM, when a line of journalists starts to form at the southern entrance of the Met, armed with QR code invitations for the press preview of the exhibition that the Met Gala celebrates (or rather, benefits). This year’s gala has raised 31 million dollars, according to Max Hollein, the museum’s Director and CEO. A single seat at the Met Gala can be purchased for $75,000; an entire table for $350,000. All of this, of course, requires the green light from Anna Wintour’s team—without her, the entire fashion world wouldn’t even know the evening was happening. She’s the official chair of the Met Gala and has turned it into a high-profile fundraising event since 1995. One of the biggest sponsors this year is Louis Vuitton, particularly under the creative leadership of Pharrell. The museum’s Costume Institute uses the funds raised to pay salaries, acquire fashion collectibles, conserve them, and curate new exhibitions. That’s the actual purpose of the Met Gala (officially the Costume Institute Benefit)—the single most important source of funding for a department of the museum that has to sustain itself, unlike the other departments. That’s due to a rule from 1946, when the former Museum of Costume Art merged with the Met, which stated that fashion does not qualify as art.

So I show my QR code, and the eager crowd of journalists from Condé Nast titles (Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ) and many other key publications makes their way to the lecture hall. Tickets for this press event can’t be bought—it’s reserved for the most important voices in (American) fashion, who will all write their articles after the event, along with a few select sponsors. Coffee, water, orange juice, and small pastries are served—most had to wake up early to be on the east side of Central Park at exactly 9 AM. A bit of small talk breaks out about who might be the next Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair U.S., and I already spot a few of my favorite people in the fashion world: Luke Meagher, a sharp-tongued creator; José Criales-Unzueta from Vogue U.S.; and one of my favorite New York designers, Raul Lopez, who has a suit from his brand LUAR featured in the exhibition. We note that many guests are wearing Ray-Bans with cameras—Meta is a sponsor of the exhibition. Eva Chen, the driver behind the Meta x Ray-Ban hype in the fashion world, tells me she forgot her glasses at home. We find our seats.

“Working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a dream I didn’t know I had,” was one of the final, touching lines in a moving speech by Monica L. Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, which served as both research and inspiration for this year’s summer Costume Institute exhibition. Miller’s work focuses on the precision and intention behind clothing—fashion as an expression of pride and dignity for those whose agency was historically stripped from them: people of African descent, forcibly removed from their homelands via the transatlantic slave trade. People of the diaspora who continue to live with the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and racism.

This year’s exhibition is titled: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. The Costume Institute’s exhibitions are planned years in advance, and Superfine could not be more timely—just five months into a new Trump administration, which feels like a step backward. Politics may not be Andrew Bolton’s thing (he’s the exhibition’s curator), but the decision to focus on this theme is undoubtedly political.

The speakers mention Virgil Abloh, the first Black designer to lead a brand under LVMH, and André Leon Talley, one of fashion’s most influential voices and one of the first Black leaders in fashion media. Two trailblazers who, in their own ways, opened doors for younger Black creatives and challenged the system.

Colman Domingo—actor, director, screenwriter, and co-chair of this year’s Met Gala—concludes the morning’s speeches with:

“We put that shit on.” Full stop.

My friend Blake Abbie and I bolt from our seats after the standing ovation, racing upstairs to be among the first to view the exhibition. In brief: Superfine is divided into 12 sections—Ownership, Presence, Distinction, Disguise, Freedom, Champion, Respectability, Wit, Tradition, Beauty, Coolness, and Cosmopolitanism.

As a self-proclaimed superfan of André Leon Talley, my first instinct is to find his iconic, personalized Louis Vuitton trunks in the exhibition. These represent his triumph—his journey from the deep American South (which is more than just a geographic term—it holds historical and political weight in relation to slavery and racism) to New York, London, Milan, and Paris—with luxury luggage in tow. The trunks are placed near the end of the show, and to my delight, they’re displayed next to similarly brown-toned bags from Telfar, the U.S. cult brand founded by Telfar Clemens, famous for the iconic shopping bag affectionately nicknamed the “Bushwick Birkin.” I’m also introduced to Quin Lewis, who acquired parts of Talley’s Louis Vuitton trunk collection at a Christie’s online auction after Talley’s death. I ask him where he keeps them when he’s not lending them to the Met. “In my living room, of course!” he replies. I wonder why the Louis Vuitton archive team didn’t snap them all up—but honestly, I love the idea of them living in a private fashion collector’s home even more.

It’s the first exhibition focused on menswear in over 20 years. We see incredible velvet suits from Wales Bonner and Olivier Rousteing for Balmain, tailoring by Ib Kamara for Off-White, Raul Lopez for LUAR, custom work by Maximilian Davis for Ferragamo, runway pieces by Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton, shoes by Martine Rose, bags by Telfar Clemens, ensembles by Willy Chavarria, LaQuan Smith, and Pyer Moss, relaxed tailoring by Jerry Lorenzo, an iconic jacket by Daniel Day for Dapper Dan Harlem, and of course Louis Vuitton pieces by Pharrell. And this long list of success stories—hopefully growing longer in the future—is a hopeful light in an industry that has historically only made room for the privileged (white) few. The media buzz around this year’s exhibition, combined with the record-breaking benefit proceeds, speaks volumes.

On the subway home, I find myself reflecting on fashion and self-determination—the very theme of my Met morning. If we have the ability to dress ourselves, we communicate a lot through our outfit choices: values, belonging, resistance, emancipation. Still on the train, I pull up the Telfar online store and buy myself a little Bushwick Birkin.

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By the way, you don’t have to fly to New York to see it all. The social media team at @metcostumeinstitute shares captivating mini-docs with interviews about Superfine online, and for analog fans, the Costume Institute releases a “catalog” every year to accompany the exhibition—a hefty book with all the works and their stories, photographed this year by Tyler Mitchell.

thank you and speak soon:) CLICK ON THE LINK HELLO PLSX!!!!!!!!