Chandrakant Lahariya | When Couture Is Transformed Into The Loudest Language Of Art

Isha Ambani once entered a space draped in a garment so intricately constructed and heavily embroidered with labour, imagination, and luxury that it briefly suspended the ordinary grammar of fashion. It was not just clothing; it felt like an event in itself. Some admired the craftsmanship, others noticed the price, but a few paused at a more uncomfortable question: what exactly are we witnessing when a dress stops being a dress and becomes spectacle?

That question returns every year in amplified form at gatherings like the Met Gala -- the annual spectacle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where celebrities, designers, billionaires and cultural figures assemble in outfits that often resemble wearable architecture more than garments. It is presented as a celebration of art and fashion. Yet it increasingly appears to be something else -- a shifting boundary where culture, commerce and visibility merge into one another.

In a world of artists, writers, curators and thinkers, one must ask: does such extravagance reflect art -- or does it simply reflect affluence dressed as art? Or does it quietly grant legitimacy to the rich to display their taste under the language of culture? Or should we accept all of this as necessary compromise, justified in the name of fund-raising for various institutions that depend on such patronage?

The Met Gala exists in this deliberate ambiguity. It raises funds for museums, supports exhibitions, and gives designers a global platform. At the same time, however, it has become a theatre of escalation, where clothing is no longer about expression or identity alone, but about scale. Longer trains, heavier embellishments, and more complex silhouettes define its visual grammar. The question it raises is less about beauty and more about excess.

But this leads to a deeper question: is human dressing art at all? And if so, what does it reveal?

Clothing has always carried meaning beyond utility. From tribal adornments to royal robes, from religious vestments to street fashion, the body has long served as a surface of cultural expression. Fashion is, in that sense, undeniably artistic -- it holds composition, texture, symbolism and memory. Yet serious art does not rest at admiration. It demands reflection, sometimes discomfort. It slows perception rather than overwhelming it.

Here, a striking contrast emerges.

Consider the work of Marina Abramović, particularly her 2010 performance The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For 736 hours, she sat silently across a table from visitors. There was no costume beyond simplicity, no spectacle beyond presence. The work relied entirely on attention and stillness.

People wept in front of her. Some smiled. Others broke down without being able to explain why. Nothing “happened” in the usual sense, and yet something profound unfolded: the raw intensity of human presence, unmediated and unprotected.

Placed beside this, the logic of the Met Gala appears inverted. There, everything happens -- lights, cameras, themes, elaborate garments -- but human presence often recedes behind construction. The individual becomes a surface for design, and identity is absorbed into aesthetic performance.

This is not to oppose fashion and performance art, nor to rank one above the other. It is to recognise two different directions of art itself: one that expands into excess, ornament, and visual saturation, and another that contracts into silence, restraint, and presence.

What, then, does extravagant dressing signify in our time?

Perhaps it reflects a society negotiating visibility as value. In an age of endless scrolling, to be seen is to exist. Clothing becomes a statement not just of taste, but of presence within a saturated visual economy. The body turns into a signal, competing for attention in an environment where attention itself is currency.

Yet there is a paradox. The more extreme the spectacle, the less we may actually perceive. When everything is heightened, meaning flattens into image. A garment is no longer read slowly; it is consumed instantly and replaced by the next.

Against this, Abramović’s silence refuses consumption. It demands time, discomfort, and participation. It suggests that art can also be subtraction, not only accumulation.

So, the real question is not whether clothing is art, but what kind of art we choose to value. Do we reward art that asks for attention, or art that offers spectacle? Do we prefer meaning that unfolds gradually, or impact that arrives instantly and fades just as quickly?

In the end, the Met Gala and Abramović’s empty chair are not opposites but reflections of the same cultural condition. One expresses the desire to be seen endlessly; the other reveals what it means to truly see.

Between these gestures lies the modern moment itself: a world where even beauty must compete for attention, and where silence has begun to feel like one of the most radical forms of art.

We seem to live in an age where everything is loud, immediate, and constantly on display. Subtlety is gradually being replaced by excess. Modern individuals and societies are increasingly encouraged to project, and exhibit versions of themselves for public consumption. There are reasons to be reflective, when every outfit becomes content, every appearance a statement, and everybody a surface for algorithms and attention, the line between self-expression and self-erasure begins to blur. The deeper question, therefore, is no longer merely what we wear, but whether, beneath this spectacle, we still remain connected to ourselves and to what truly matters. Perhaps it is also time to reflect on how our understanding of art, beauty and identity is quietly changing as a society.

Dr Chandrakant Lahariya is a specialist in cardio-metabolic medicine and an art enthusiast