Every year on the first Monday of May, decked out A-listers flock to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the annual fundraising ball known as the Met Gala. This year's theme was "camp," and stars from Lady Gaga — who wore four different outfits — to Katy Perry — dressed in a fully functioning chandelier dress by Moschino — stole the show in their extravagantly over-the-top ensembles.
And then there was Kanye West.
Though celebrities often wear hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of custom couture and jewels, the rapper and designer took a significantly more subdued approach and wore a basic black jacket that's available online for less than $50.
West attended the Met Gala wearing a simple, black zip-up jacket from Dickies, called "The Eisenhower Jacket," Vogue reports. Currently, you can purchase the jacket online at Dickies for $42.99. West paired the jacket with black pants and Yeezy work boots.
In addition to the jacket's affordable price tag, West's overall look was in stark contrast to the theme of the 2019 ball, which was "Camp: Notes on Fashion," framed around Susan Sontag's 1964 essay that summarized camp as a love for the unnatural, artificial and exaggerated.
West's wife Kim Kardashian West wore a beaded latex Thierry Mugler dress that looked wet and was dripping with crystals made to look like droplets. It reportedly took eight months to make. Her sister Kendall Jenner wore a Versace gown accessorized with a Tiffany necklace featuring over 40 Tiffany diamonds and 19 imperial topaz stones.
And Cardi B. wore an oxblood custom Tom Browne gown that featured 30,000 burned and dyed coque feathers, which reportedly took 35 people over 2,000 hours to create.
West's simplistic approach to what's known as "fashion's biggest night" was criticized as boring by some, while at least one outlet questioned whether the choice was actually "courageous."
In the past, other celebrities have been dressed by affordable brands like H&M and Topshop, though those looks were not off the rack.
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