After a long day of slinging garment bags across New York City in the summer heat — some days would take me from Tribeca to Harlem to Brooklyn and back — I was more than happy to find myself on the mustard yellow couch that occupied the back wall of Elaine Welteroth’s office. It wasn’t quite home, but it felt close. Some days, my mother asked me why I bothered paying rent for my Tribeca two-bedroom when I spent so much of my time at Elaine’s home or office.
I rested on the couch for a grand total of two minutes before my phone rang. Elaine was headed to New Orleans for Essence Festival, and needed the notes I’d written up for an engagement in which she’d be appearing. “There’s a binder somewhere in the office,” Gavin, Elaine’s twenty-nine year old assistant, said over the phone. “Can you look around for it?” This was before I’d eventually clean the office top to bottom, and locating the binder took longer than it should have amidst the many PR packages.
Inside the binder was a compilation of research done on Camp, the theme of the 2019 Met Gala. The official name of the theme — “Camp: Notes on Fashion” — took its cue from Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’” which looms large as a literary giant and informed much of what filled our screens for this year’s Met Gala. Camp existed long before it was validated by the likes of Anna Wintour (and long before E! asked Elaine to be a part of their broadcast team for the event), and Sontag proves that, offering 58 points on the essence of Camp. When reading Elaine’s collection of articles on Camp, I didn’t come to a particular understanding of the theme. If anything, I was more confused. Camp seemed unquantifiable, something you could only understand if you understood it. Throughout the summer, Elaine would refer to things as being “campy” — selfies, outfits, makeup looks — and I would quietly allow the references to go over my head In Sontag’s meticulously constructed essay — with 58 points organized into eight sections, each marked with a different quote — I find a more in-depth understanding of the essence of camp.
“There are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed… Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration,” Sontag writes. “And Camp is esoteric — something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.” By writing “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Sontag brought a subculture into the mainstream, arguably without regard for the people that engaged in said subculture. She told a story that had previously gone untold, one of my many goals in journalism. What I found to be most compelling about the essay is its organization — there is no question about the flow or how to understand it. This organization is one that I would likely carry with me into future journalistic projects. What didn’t work for me, however, was Sontag’s style of language. I found that I had to read her words multiple times for them to stick, and even then they barely stuck. Sontag is certainly a great writer, but I have found that I appreciate a more accessible and easily understandable writing style.
written for literary journalism at loyola marymount university
