Ah, The Met Gala. The fashion event of the year. An annual benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City, the Met Ball hosts celebrities and industry hotshots alike. 

Every year, guests are expected to match the theme of the year's annual exhibit and when this year's theme was announced, I nearly screamed in excitement: Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: The Art of the Inbetween.

Rei Kawakubo is one of the most influential fashion designers ever. Period.

She pioneered a movement of avant-garde fashion, challenging conventional beauty standards by defying typical silhouettes and resisting the feminine form. In the early 1970's, she started her own womenswear company, Comme des Garçons (literally translating to "Like Men"). The brand specializes in "anti-fashion," going against the grain, deconstructing the idea of an outfit and turning fashion into art. 

Her designs speak for themselves:

Source: Liberty Belle Mag

Source: i-D

Source: Yahoo

It's like a Grimm's Fairytale had a baby with an empress of the Tokugawa, which then traveled through space and time and got distorted in the vacuum.

Plus, look at Rei -- you know she's a total powerhouse and creative genius just by looking at her:

Souce: The Fashion Law

So, you can imagine my face as I eagerly flipped through the various Met Gala "Best Dressed" lists online and saw things like this:

Source: Vanity Fair

*PSA to Cara Delevigne and Gisele Bundchen: the Manus x Machina theme was actually last year. Perhaps Cara's tinfoil hat transmitted the information a little too late . . .

But seriously, what is going on here? This was the biggest opportunity to step out in a show-stopping gown to honor one of the greatest fashion designers of all time, and two of the world's biggest super models didn't take it.

It wasn't all bad, though. Rihanna and Solange never fail to disappoint. They're not afraid to take risks and challenge our traditional notion of fashion, much like Rei Kawakubo herself. Honorable mention also goes to Tracy Ellis Ross, another fashion powerhouse who knows how to go big (I wonder who she learned that from . . .)

Source: Vanity Fair