Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, trans activists who played a pivotal role in the 1969 Stonewall Riots. “While camp may be seen as inauthentic, it is often most an expression of the most sincere.” “Historically, this idea of camp is linked to what was someone’s personal truth but what was seen by others as inauthentic or outside of the norm for them to behave,” Mamp says. He references cross-dressing at masquerade balls and queer communities in the early 20th century dressing or acting in a way colloquially referred to as “camping it up.” “What’s more campy than the queen building a little village, the Hameau de la Reine, for her to play shepherdess there, but to do so with crystal chandeliers, the marble tables and perfectly manicured gardens.”īut there’s an even richer history of “doing” camp in queer communities, says Mamp, who teaches a class at LSU on LGBTQ+ history through the lens of fashion. “It’s hard not to think of life at Versailles in the 18th century, in particular, as being a personification of camp,” Mamp says. The Palace of Versailles is another early example many point to. Sontag points to the early examples of the camp aesthetic in the late 17th century and early 18th-century mannerist art English poets like Alexander Pope, William Congreve and Horace Walpole, architecture like the Rococo churches of Munich and a French literature style called preciosity. “But I don’t think it did appropriate justice to the connection between camp and LGBTQ+ communities.” Camp has roots in queer fashion, art
“It put camp into the common vernacular in a way that it probably hadn’t been in a while,” Mamp says. But the stories of wealthy celebrities do not necessarily encompass what camp is and has been, Mamp says. The Met Gala oozes exclusivity, and it's part of what makes it so interesting to watch for those of us who didn't get an invite. Janelle Monáe's trippy look included no less than four hats.īut Mamp says it failed – some didn’t understand the essence of camp (cue Karlie Kloss’ “Looking camp right in the eye”) and it didn’t center the LGBTQ+ community, which has been an essential part of camp expression for hundreds of years. Cara Delevingne's headpiece was made of bananas, fried eggs, fingers, mouths and eyeballs. Michael Urie sported a half-tux, half-gown look. The Met Gala tried its hand in 2019 with its theme “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” Billy Porter was carried in by six shirtless pharaohs and flew gold wings. Breed even points out now-campy early 2000s runway looks. Think Katy Perry’s bubblegum sweet, plastic-laden dresses, Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Gen Z often applies the word to celebrities in the way they act or dress. “It creates this whole new aspect of seriousness that people really enjoy.” “Rei Kawakubo, who heads Comme des Garçons, has a vision for her fashion that’s a little bit comic, but she kind of plays with it,” Breed says. Breed points out Comme des Garçons runway shows, which often feature over-the-top looks that, to the average viewer, may seem more like an arts and crafts project than high fashion. 'Black Drag Queens Invented Camp': Black, queer culture at the 2019 Met Gala Examples of camp fashionĬamp is often most clearly seen in fashion. “You miss the mark, but in missing your mark, you create something that's good in its own way.” “It’s an attempted seriousness that fails,” Breed says.
Wesley Breed, a 20-year-old fashion influencer and student at New York University describes it as “so bad it’s good.”
“It is the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of things-being-what-they-are-not.” “Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style – but a particular kind of style,” Sontag wrote. It's expressing yourself earnestly and sincerely, but coming off as over-the-top to those around you. In other words, "camp" isn't often intentional. “Camp asserts that good taste is not simply good taste that there exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste,” Sontag wrote in her “Notes on ‘Camp.’” What does camp mean?Ĭamp is an aesthetic or expression of “inauthentic visual cues,” says Michael Mamp, an associate professor of Lousiana State University’s fashion program and the director and curator of the university’s textile and costume museum. Though “camp” preexisted American writer Susan Sontag, she produced one of the most seminal texts to define it in 1964: You may have heard it as slang adopted by Gen Z or in context with the 2019 Met Gala theme, but it has a much deeper history, particularly in queer communities. "Camp" is a term many know but few can define.
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