- If you can't take petty
tasks unnecessarily seriously,
what are you even doing with your life?
(dramatic music)
When Billy Porter, in
conjunction with Vogue,
encouraged the people at home
to don our chicest potato couch lewks
and recreate an iconic
Met Gala look from home,
one does not simply pass up
this pristine opportunity
for some serious tomfoolery.
The look I have chosen to usurp
is Ariana Grande's Sistine
Chapel gown from 2018.
The material: toilet paper.
(orchestral music)
(let the tomfoolery begin)
I'm going to make up a
couple of panels I think,
for the underdress.
I don't wanna stitch them all together,
because I don't want to start
out with a tube of skirt
because the gown is massive
and flowy and floofy and large.
So I think I'm going to start off
with a couple of large panels like this,
that I can then pleat down into something
that will give it some volume,
whilst also maintaining that
sort of layery, floofiness.
I'm making this sound way more pretentious
than it actually is.
(orchestral music)
Ok, ok, this should work.
One, two, three, four.
So I think I'm gonna make
up eight panels of these.
(intense math-doing time)
That will then pleat down to
form the underskirt, right.
(tense orchestral music)
I'm going to endeavor to sew
these toilet paper strips together.
Karolina obviously found a
way to do this successfully,
so I think it can be done.
We shall see.
(whirring)
(antique sewing machine ASMR time!)
(soft orchestral music)
(whirring)
(soft orchestral music)
Now before a small armada of people
go leaving strongly roasting
letters in the comments
about the scarcity of this
most precious commodity,
allow me to first explain
my intellectual reasoning
behind this decision,
that being the very
principal of the Met Gala
and indeed the core concept
of the ostentatious
high society gathering,
documented all throughout history.
From King Henry VIII's
Field of the Cloth of Gold
to Marie Antoinette's grand masquerades
to the Vanderbilt Ball of 1883.
The Met Gala, in effect,
is one and the same.
An exclusive and highly
publicized gathering
at which only members
of a select upper tier
of social society are able
to attend through invitation only.
These events are publicized
profusely to be consumed
and largely adored secondhand
by the wider public.
Thus creating a need to
demonstrate to utmost effect,
status, position, and wealth.
A feat most feasibly
achieved through dress.
Be it with sumptuous
silk and cloth of gold,
or by donning the latest Worth gown,
these events provoke needs for fashions
that immediately assert
the attendees worthiness
to participate in these
highest circles of society.
Thus it would be largely
beside the point for me not to
honor the traditional
significance of these such events
by ostentatiously flaunting
such 2020 definitions
of copious consumptions
of precious resources.
If only, at least through
entirely satirical means.
(upbeat, mischievous music)
In all seriousness, I
should like to point out
that simply because some toilet paper
is momentarily refashioned
into an unconventional form,
does not mean it no longer is able
to serve its initial function.
So I have come to the realization
that I really should not
be draping the bodice right now
and in fact I probably
should have put the waistband
onto the skirt first, taken this off,
sewn this, and draped the
bodice without all of this.
So I'm going to stop before I move
onto the rest of piecing
the bodice together.
Just sort of fold these up,
I've got a linen bit of
tape that I'm just going
to stitch on the top here,
as the waistband to hold
all of this into place
and then we will get the bodice together
and attach the two layers together.
(upbeat orchestral music)
(whirring)
(upbeat orchestral music)
(werk)
The quantity of dust in this vicinity
is...not pleasant.
I think this is very much going
to be a single wear occasion.
Having achieved the desired skirt shape,
I then proceeded onto
draping the bodice bit,
which was surprisingly easy
since the strips of toilet paper
are already paneled to a decent
width of a paneled bodice.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(how she's doing all of
this with toilet paper
I will never understand)
With everything pinned into place,
the bodice is then removed from the stand
and is stitched together by
hand because this is couture,
and I'm attempting to leave
as much as ease in as possible
to accommodate for the
stretch of the bra band.
So this whole thing has
a relatively decent hope
of staying in place.
(dramatic orchestral music)
Hey past Bernadette,
where do you see yourself in five years?
Well friend, I see myself
sitting in a sewing room
at approximately 11 o'clock at night,
hand stitching some toilet paper together
into a couture bodice.
(dramatic orchestral music)
And finally, my reason for choosing
this look in particular, this Bow Thing.
I mean come on, do not try and tell me
this wasn't just begging to
be remade out of toilet paper,
because I will not hear of it otherwise.
(dramatic orchestral music)
List of things I literally
thought I would never be doing,
(deep existential sigh)
No, it goes up, like a lot.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(uplifting orchestral music)
(work the runway Bernadette)
(I dare anyone to tell me
she is not serving lewks)
(soft mischievous music)
