When it comes to fashion, I would not claim to be an expert. But even I could have done better than this year’s Met Gala cohort.

Perhaps it was some sort of highly sophisticated fashion joke – in which case, I’m afraid it went way over my head.

The theme was ‘Fashion Is Art’. A better one would have been ‘No Amount of Money Can Buy You Style’. But then what do you expect from an event bankrolled by Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos?

This is a woman who can make Dior look like Dorothy Perkins, turn Prada into Primark, Gucci into George at Asda. At her recent wedding to the zillionaire owner of Amazon, she wore a $300,000 (£220,000) Dolce & Gabbana dress which required 900 hours of custom atelier work.

And yet, somehow, on her it looked she’d got it off the Chinese site Temu.

In the immortal words of Dolly Parton: ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap, honey’. But while there’s always been something joyful about Ms Parton’s deliberately trashy aesthetic, Mrs Bezos’s desire to re-cast herself as a sophisticated style icon is somewhat tragic.

No matter how hard she tries, she never seems to quite succeed. And now Anna Wintour, in her infinite wisdom, has allowed the inherent Bezos tackiness to infect the rarified world of Vogue (the Bezoses reportedly paid at least £7.5million to sponsor the Gala). And in so doing, devalue it, perhaps for ever.

It’s almost miraculous, this ability of Sanchez Bezos’s to turn any outfit into something out of an 1980s Littlewoods catalogue – even when it’s a custom-made midnight-blue Schiaparelli gown designed to reference the John Singer Sargent painting Madame X. But she managed it somehow on the night.

What is it? The very slightly too-dark fake tan? The too-tight fit? The cantilevered breasts? The airbrushed complexion, as smooth and shiny as moulded plastic?

The rest of the A-list crowd clearly got the memo, because they too did not disappoint.

Heidi Klum brought a ghoulish element to the proceedings, dressed as a living marble statue constructed from lace and foam, complete with floral stone headpiece and painted grey teeth. Beyonce picked up the Halloween theme with a custom-made diamante exo-skeleton by Olivier Rousteing, accessorising with husband Jay Z and daughter Blue Ivy in Balenciaga.

This was less fashion as art so much as fairground freakshow. Katy Perry had her moment in a white Stella McCartney strapless gown worn with a chrome painted silver mask described by some as ‘astro-chic’. It was certainly astronomically hideous. Not to be outdone, Rihanna arrived dressed as what looked like some sort of intergalactic black hole, or an extra from Dr Who. Apparently this was ‘sculptural Maison Margiela by Glenn Martens’ and not at all some weird leftover from the BBC props department.

Her husband, meanwhile, the rapper ASAP Rocky, wore a pink dressing gown with feather accents that wouldn’t have looked outré on Liberace himself. But even he was no match for man-of-the-moment, Heated Rivalry's Connor Storrie, whose Yves Saint Laurent ensemble was just the wrong side of camp.

Continuing the sci-fi theme, rapper Cardi B wore a dress afflicted with what looked like giant pustules which appeared intent on consuming her. Or perhaps it was just her Brazilian butt lift escaping the confines of its body stocking – who can tell. Speaking of which, Kim Kardashian wore a hideous orange creation made of fibreglass and leather that made her resemble a bottle of Lucozade. At least her look was created by an actual artist, British pop artist Allen Jones, known for his controversial sculptures of the female form in degrading, often pornographic positions. Somewhat appropriate, given the origins of Kardashian’s career.

Her half-sister, Kylie Jenner, had her fake nipples out too, in a Schiaparelli number designed to look like she was in a permanent state of undress, an homage to the Louvre’s Venus de Milo. Their mother, Kris Jenner, wore a Dolce & Gabbana kimono – although her deep-plane facelift was arguably closer to the theme of the night: whoever did that truly is an artist.

Then there was actress Sarah Paulson, who tried to make a political statement against ‘greed and corruption’ in a grey tulle gown from French brand Matieres Fecales, accessorised with a dollar bill mask over her eyes. Except it fell rather flat when critics pointed out she is worth £9million and tickets to the event cost £73,000. 

Of course, the Met Gala has always been a celebration of fashion’s wildest excesses. But never before has it been quite so tasteless, so crass, so hideously garish and devoid of style. No wonder even Wintour herself could barely be bothered.

This is her first appearance at the Gala after announcing she was stepping down as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue last year – and her outfit for the night was an unsubtle repeat of the one she wore in 2019, just in a different colour. Even the gala’s co-chair Nicole Kidman failed to bring her A-game, in an off-colour red sequinned Dior that was just too tight, too harsh and had too many feathers.

Is the problem here fashion or celebrity? Are designers just trying too hard or do they simply lack talent? Haute couture has always been about marrying style with technique, and that simply wasn’t on show here.

The other problem is that so much of high fashion now relies on the wearer being etiolated – and indeed, much of what we saw here was designed with that very purpose in mind. So many of the outfits seemed to have been conceived to highlight the wearer’s thinness – it’s an obsession that never seems to go away, despite the best efforts of people such as American writer and actress Lena Dunham.

There were, of course, a few exceptions. Margot Robbie looked genuinely lovely in gold custom-made Chanel, her structured long-line bodice a work of art in itself. And there was something joyful about Naomi Watts’s black floral Dior – a classic with a twist.

Cara Delevingne also scored highly with her dramatic black Ralph Lauren number, and Emma Chamberlain’s Van Gogh-inspired Mugler gown, hand-painted by artist Anna Deller-Yee, was perfectly on-theme.

My personal favourite was the actress Tessa Thompson, who turned heads in a custom-made Valentino styled to look like drops of paint in a dramatic, Yves Klein shade of blue. Proof that you can look daring without looking tarty.

Mrs Bezos, take note.