Actor Jameela Jamil has criticised the Met Gala’s Karl Lagerfeld theme, saying the event celebrated a man who “was publicly cruel to women, to fat people, to immigrants and to sexual assault survivors”.
Jamil first criticised the 2023 Met Gala’s theme honouring the late Lagerfeld in October last year when it was announced, and she has doubled down on social media in line with the event taking place.
“Last night, Hollywood and fashion said the quiet part out loud when a lot of famous feminists chose to celebrate at the highest level, a man who was so publicly cruel to women, to fat people, to immigrants and to sexual assault survivors,” Jamil wrote.
“And all the women’s publications, and spectators online, chose to gleefully ignore it.”
Jamil went on to say “no one has perfect morals” but it was unnecessary to award the high honour to a “known bigot”.
“Everyone just decided all of a sudden we can separate the art from the artist when *convenient*,” Jamil said.
“It’s one rule for us, and another rule for everybody else. Last night we relinquished our right to be taken at all seriously about anything important.”
So why is honouring Karl Legerfeld controversial?
Lagerfeld, who died in 2019, is an icon in the fashion industry who worked as the creative director of Chanel from 1983 until his death. He was also the creative director of Fendi, and was widely regarded for his artistic vision and influence. However, throughout his career, he made a range of controversial comments, including saying musician Adele was a “little too fat”, and criticisng the looks of Pippa Middleton. In 2013, he said nobody wanted to see curvy models on catwalks.
Notably, he was a critic of the #MeToo movement, telling the magazine Numéro that he was “fed up” with the movement and skeptical of those who came forward with allegations.
“What shocks me most in all of this are the starlets who have taken 20 years to remember what happened,” he said. “Not to mention the fact there are no prosecution witnesses.”
He also spoke negatively about regulations that were implemented in the fashion industry to protect young models from abuse.
“I read somewhere that now you must ask a model if she is comfortable with posing. It’s simply too much, from now on, as a designer, you can’t do anything,” he said.
“It’s unbelievable. If you don’t want your pants pulled about, don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent.”
In her Instagram post, Jamil noted that Hollywood’s honouring of Lagerfeld was an example of the double standards within liberal politics.
“This isn’t about cancel culture. It’s not even about Karl. It’s about showing how selective cancel culture is within liberal politics, in the most blatant way so far. It’s about showing why people don’t trust liberals. Because of slippery tactics and double standards like this. And it’s not just Hollywood here, the general public online participated and were entirely complicit in the erasure of the truth last night. They replaced their pitchforks with spoons last night, to lap that shit right up…” Jamil wrote.
“If we carry on like this, don’t be shocked when we lose the next election.”