Despite Anna Wintour’s decree that all social media is banned from the inside of the Met Gala, on the red carpet, new tech was the trendiest accessory.
I’ve been watching the Met Gala for a good few years, and it’s been a particular highlight the few times Vogue opted to live stream the red carpet (even when the hosts have been painful to watch). But this year no such live stream was available and yet I feel as if I had the most intimate Met Gala experience yet.
We were live tweeting the carpet for our new client, Dot Fashion (yes you can get a .fashion address—it’s pretty exciting) and I was desperately scouring the interwebs for a live stream and that’s when I stumbled across The Cut’s Live Stream via the app Periscope.
Periscope was founded about a year ago with the idea of sharing the world through another person’s eyes. Whilst that’s the very essence of social media, what makes Periscope unique is that this is live, unfiltered content. A socially powered live stream. Pretty cool eh? Well cool enough for Twitter to purchase it in February, before it even launched, for an even cooler $100 million.
The Cut, along with a few other publications, streamed all of the action, including their commentary and a little gossip, live from the red carpet. Now we’re not talking red carpet interviews, mundane questions and orange hued hosts; we’re talking excitable fashion journalists taking you along for the ride—a personal experience from the sidelines of one of fashion’s most exclusive events.
It was social media, long lorded for it’s part in the democratization of fashion, at it’s finest.
Katie Couric, a guest at the Met Gala, also threw Periscope into fashion action. Caught on The Cut’s Periscope herself, she immediately realized the potential of this app combined with an exclusive red carpet, and spent a good 30 minutes hanging out with the journalists whilst capturing her own red carpet experience for her fans. As a third-party viewer (watching her Periscope via another Periscope—how very meta) it was quite a delightful experience. I also have a new found adoration for Katie Couric, especially for her “I’m sorry if you go to the Met Ball you should not be chewing gum” aside to one the girls at The Cut.
Beyonce arrived so late that avid Snapchatters were the first to experience her red carpet look.
Periscope wasn’t the only new tech hitting the red carpet. Snapchat, which has been around for quite some time now, has definitively moved from being solely the tool of teenage sexters to the high fashion realm. Celebrities and journalists alike used the app to capture intimate moments from the limo to the red carpet, as well as what look like a few sneaky, verboten snaps from inside the venue.
The event had its very own geofilter (a filter or artwork you can place over your photo or video which is generated by your location) and a curated Snapchat Story (a user can elect to post their Snapchat image or video to a story related to an event or location).
Again, this is an unfiltered (well, not literally), live, and intimate look into an experience. It’s instant and non-exclusive and it’s fascinating. Well done fashion world. Yet again, you’re on the cutting edge of social media, and you’re making me proud.