“This year’s Met Ball—held Monday night and inspired by a Costume Institute exhibition, Art of the In-Between, showcasing the career of avant-garde Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons—was something remarkable in the Annals of the Absurd, an explosion of frippery and shamelessness that recalled late-Weimar or mid-career Mad Hatter in its slavish devotion to peacockery in the face of complex, oftentimes brutal, reality.”