Anna Wintour’s armour

By Rebecca Willis

“The First Monday in May” is a documentary with a simple narrative. It tells the story of two feats of organisation: the mounting of the “China Through the Looking Glass” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the staging of the fund-raising extravaganza that accompanies it, known as the Met Ball. That this event is also known as “Anna’s party” (as in Anna Wintour of American Vogue) and attracts worldwide press coverage for its glamorous guests and their red-carpet outfits, goes some way to explaining the attraction of the project for the film’s director, Andrew Rossi.

He follows Andrew Bolton, curator at the Met’s Costume Institute and the brains behind the museum’s blockbuster Alexander McQueen show in 2011. We watch as he picks his way through the minefield of his chosen subject: broadly, how Western fashion has been influenced by the East, and by the West’s stereotypes of the East. The museum’s own Department of Asian Art must not feel its artefacts are being used as a mere backdrop; China itself must not be offended by the placement of images of Mao. The film also follows Wintour as she helps hone the exhibition and simultaneously “curates” the gala dinner which will go on to raise $12.5m. The table plan for all the celebrity egos is a consumate work of diplomacy.