Roll up for a buffet of baffling outfits, celebs scared stiff of Anna Wintour and an utter refusal to acknowledge the outside world

Tuesday is officially the morning after the Met Gala of the night before, when we civilians get to press our noses up against the glass of our phone screens and pass unsparing judgment on dresses whose trains alone cost more than HS2.

If you haven’t sat in mismatched pyjamas huffing toast while remarking what an unacceptable misstep Lana Del Rey’s mosquito net was, and how Chanel seems to be going tits up, then you have simply failed to capitalise on the digital banquet spread out for you. These are dark times, and nothing but … gratitude, I think? … should be shown for film director Taika Waititi’s decision to come dressed as a brown pleather three-piece suite, while his wife, Rita Ora , presented as the ribbon curtain tacked over their back door to keep the flies off it.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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Star wore two dresses by John Galliano at event cutting across fashion, celebrity and Hollywood

The Met Gala and its red carpet is an annual X-ray of where power lies in fashion and in the adjacent worlds of celebrity, Hollywood and music.

It shows us who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down. It is a heat map showing us the connections between culture and entertainment, between the establishment and new money, between the tech billionaires who have the deep pockets to fund nights like these and the designers whose dresses their wives want to wear. These are the new corridors of soft power, and the Met Gala draws back the veil on the alliances, feuds and fallings-out.

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The theme was JG Ballard’s 1962 short story, The Garden of Time, which meant references to decay, lots of florals and more than one look that seemed to have nothing to do with anything

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All the coverage and latest updates from fashion’s biggest night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Follow live

The first big reveal of the night is the carpet that covers the Met’s famous steps. This year it’s not red but a cream and green tie-dye effect. Florals would have been a bit too literal but why not some luscious real life green grass? This is a bit like someone left a green sock in a white wash.

Florals for the Met? Groundbreaking. But alas it seems guaranteed.

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Four stylists explain how to use knits, coats and accessories to transform a favourite frock into an all-seasons garment

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A great dress (obviously one that has pockets ) can be effortless in the truest sense of the word. Flattering, comfortable and a self-contained outfit, especially during summer when it’s warm enough to leave the house without a jacket. Now, as the temperature drops in the southern hemisphere, it might seem like the time to relegate summer dresses to the back of your wardrobe. But, with the return of Y2K fashion and the trend towards layering and dresses being worn over pants , that doesn’t have to be the case. Here four stylists explain how to build a winter outfit around a summer dress.

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Cosmetic procedures are on the rise among younger people; I’m barely 30. Still this is about more than just clinging to youth

Everyone goes through it: a reckoning with one’s own mortality in the mirror, poking at eye bags and tugging at folds of loose skin. Am I looking a bit rough? It’s part of the human condition to fear ageing, but among millennials and gen Z there seems to be a heightened anxiety around growing older, coupled with an increasingly casual attitude towards getting fillers and Botox compared with previous generations.

Almost half of millennial women polled by the BBC in 2019 said they believed that having a cosmetic procedure was akin to having a haircut . I can say from experience that it is not. Like many, I have fallen victim to negative anti-ageing rhetoric. After months of staring at my tired face on Zoom calls during lockdown, I felt as if my hot years were slipping through my fingers. When the world opened up, I found a doctor to “restore” my hollowed out under-eyes with 1ml of filler. I was barely 28.

Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity and the Truth About Where I Belong

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Our national style is ‘not too polished’, apparently, and ‘a little bit undone’. Can we be a bit more specific?

Chioma Nnadi, who has taken over at British Vogue , says she has settled back in seamlessly after 20 years out of the UK. “I realised just how much growing up in London shaped me,” she told a Vogue Club podcast . “I’ve been talking a lot with my friends about this idea of British girl energy; it’s just an irreverence, kind of a cheekiness, it’s not too polished, and it’s a little bit undone …”

British girl energy, eh? I love this: time for us to claim our own style identity, like the French or the Scandinavians ; something to be spoken of in vague, reverent generalities. This could be our new Cool Britannia moment, without the Gallagher brothers ruining everything. But what is BGE, beyond Nnadi’s idea of cheekiness and lack of polish?

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

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I’m tired of the dull, drab and mundane. Bring on the gold lamé dresses and pomegranate-scented potpourri

I devoured the journalist Hamish Bowles’s recent account of his recovery from a severe stroke , not just because good writing on life-altering events is my favourite genre, but for the way it explored the role of beauty in his recovery – and his life.

Bowles, who is World of Interiors’ editor-at-large, was pondering buying a “1930s gold lamé Lanvin dress” the day he was catapulted into the unlovely but life-saving surroundings of a stroke unit for 50 days, then into rehab for many more. He describes the things that first helped him to feel like himself, intubated and unable to speak, and those that shaped his long, slow convalescence. A “pomegranate-scented terracotta potpourri”, violet-scented face cream, lavender roses from Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and an “exquisite arrangement” delivered by Marc Jacobs, who wore a “wide-lapel jacket of shocking pink”. Bowles’s world gradually widens again in recovery, taking in Vermeer and Hockney exhibitions, and for his first trip home he wears a “vintage amethyst corduroy Dries Van Noten suit”.

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A vintage or handed-down dress can be a meaningful, sustainable choice. No wonder pre-loved looks are on the rise

Clothing connects us to the past, memories woven into every stitch and stain. Wedding dresses are especially precious, passed down through the generations. Their unique designs tell a story, and every puffed sleeve or dramatic drop-waist reveals the era they came from.

In an industry that leans towards overconsumption, second-hand wedding dresses can be a meaningful, personal and sustainable choice.

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