Jess Cartner-Morley

Forget modern edicts and prepare for the return of power dressing, big hair, short skirts and movie-star-in-a-convertible sunglasses

Boom boom is this year’s new vibe. It’s a vibe, not just a trend, meaning it takes tectonic rumblings in culture and gives them expression in what we wear and say and drink and watch on TV.

Boom boom is a new weather system that is sweeping away pretty much everything we thought we knew about modern fashion (gender fluidity, quiet luxury, elevated basics, ethical brands) and replacing it with ambitious power dressing for day, and traditional tropes of feminine and masculine sexual allure for evening. It is fur (real or fake), gold watches, big hair, wearing ties, sexy dancing. It is a silhouette that has inflection points at the shoulders (big), the breasts (important) and the waist (tiny) instead of worshipping a peachy bum or flat abs.

Kamala Harris snuck in back door leaving fashion icons at forefront as New York’s party of the year ran with the theme ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’

The party of the year had the potential to be a political firecracker. New York’s ultimate see-and-be-seen event, the Met Gala, was also the launch of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, a fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum honouring the subversive power of black style and the role of dandyism in expanding ideals of masculinity. In other words, the A-list were showing up to raise a toast to diversity under the watchful eye of an administration bent on reversing it.

Event where fashion and politics meet puts editor Anna Wintour, a vocal Democrat supporter, in the spotlight

On Monday night, the party of the year will ask the question: can Vogue keep diversity in fashion in Trump’s America?

The Met Gala, the knotty point where fashion meets politics, will be in the spotlight. The annual event has become a pop cultural phenomenon by reinventing party dressing as a world of internet-breaking daredevil stunts. Kim Kardashian wearing the dress in which Marilyn Monroe serenaded John F Kennedy, Lady Gaga changing outfits four times in front of the cameras and Katy Perry dressed as a cheeseburger serve the thrills for the social media generation that a James Bond car chase did for their parents.