"My hands are really cold," complained Camila Cabello. "I can't feel my hands." To anyone watching her arrival at the Met GalaOfficially the Costume Institute Gala, a yearly fundraising gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York. It is known for its extravagant themes and outfits. on Sunday, the reason was obvious: she was carrying a large block of ice. With a rose in its centre, it was an accessory for her dress - a design by Ludovic de Saint Sernin which took over 450 hours to make, using 250,000 crystals.

There were plenty of other startling costumes. Tyla's Balmain dress looked like - and was partly made of - sand. The effect was sensational, but it was so awkward to wear that she had to be helped up the stairs. Demi Moore wore a dress by Harris Reed with enormous pink peonies made from old wallpaper, and with arrows sticking out of it.

Lana Del Rey had a veil held in place by small tree branches, while Uma Thurman's shoulders were covered in fake butterflies. Several guests wore dresses with enormously long trains: Serena Williams's Balenciaga gown was made from 25m of taffeta laminated with gold foil, while Cardi B's designed by Windowsen needed nine men to help carry it.

The Met Gala has become a byword for everything that is most glamorous and extravagant in fashion. It is held each year at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to raise money for its Costume Institute.

Tickets cost tens of thousands of dollars, but only people who are invited can buy them. Guests have to be approved by the editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour.

This year's theme was "The Garden of Time" - the title of a dystopianRelating to an imagined society where there is great suffering or injustice.  short story by JG BallardAn English novelist and satirist, known for his provocative fiction. . It tells of an aristocratic couple who live in a splendid villa, surrounded by gorgeous gardens whose flowers can slow the passage of time. But their sybariticLuxury-loving. existence is threatened by a mob of ragged, dispossessed people marching towards them.

The theme was chosen to fit in with the Costume Institute's latest exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. It focuses on clothes in its collection which are too delicate to be worn, to create "a metaphor for the fragility of fashion" and "examine the cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal".¹

In an article for the BBC, Rosalind Jana argues that the theme is weird "in the context of an event that is a celebration of affluence, excess and rarefied beauty... perhaps acutely so, when set against the backdrop of global volatilityChanging frequently or unpredictably. and economic uncertainty, the divisions between safety and danger, wealth and poverty feeling ever starker".

The point was underlined by demonstrators who tried to disrupt the gala in protest against the war in Gaza.

According to the designer Inacio Ribeiroin,² "High fashion is intrinsicallyIn an essential or natural way. elitist, because it's not trying to please everyone. It is a reflection of social status and the culture of the leisure class."

But the journalist Tanya Gold points out³ that not all fashion needs to be that way: "Fashion, at its best, can allow men and women to express themselves through clothes. It allows people to reflect their own moods, it can be a lot of fun."

But is fashion utterly pointless?

Yes: It is all about showing off and getting people to buy clothes that often look ridiculous and quickly go out of date. It is against the whole spirit of sustainability, creating huge carbon emissions.

No: It is a wonderful expression of human creativity. It makes people's lives more colourful and enjoyable and is an important source of employment. Upcycling means it does not need to be wasteful.

Or... Fashion in general is not, but the Met Gala is. It involves people wearing incredibly expensive clothes for the first and last time to raise money for exhibiting clothes that no one can wear.