This year's Met Gala dress code was 'The Garden of Time,' a reference to a 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard about a count and countess who live in an opulent villa surrounded by a wall. Inside the wall, in the garden of time, 'the air seemed brighter, the sun warmer, while the plain was always dull and remote.' Every day, the count gazes out to the horizon to assess the progress of a huge army 'composed of a vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers in ragged uniforms, pressing forward in a disorganized tide' toward his property.
To me, this is a story about anxiety: 'Both of them knew the time garden was dying.' The count and his wife take a walk through the garden every evening, trying not to count the remaining flowers, commenting on how many there are left, as if attempting to comfort themselves.
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