More, Always More

How the Met Gala Perfected Dante’s Vision of Overindulgence

If Dante had somehow ended up at the Met Gala 2026, he would have looked around for a moment and said, “This feels familiar.”

Dante was the Italian writer who imagined Hell as a series of levels, each one for a different kind of bad behaviour.

The third level was for people who could never stop indulging themselves - especially with food and pleasure.

In his version, they were stuck in cold, dirty slush, always uncomfortable, and never satisfied.

Now picture the Met Gala in New York this week: a place where the whole point is excess.

On paper, it’s a charity fashion event. But in practice, it’s something closer to a ritualised display of elite self-regard, where everything is amplified, inflated, and pushed until it stops meaning anything except “look at me looking at you.”

Nothing is subtle.

Everything is trying very hard to be seen …