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As a fashion statement, the red carpet at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gala — that seemingly endless stretch of crimson that leads from Fifth Avenue, up the dozens of steps of the museum’s great staircase and into the Great Hall — occupies an odd netherland between runway and reality.

What we see on it is the expression of a designer’s vision, dosed with some guidance from an actual person (as opposed to a model whose job it is to wear clothes, or at least as close to an actual person as a member of public-iety, that blend of publicity and society, can be) wearing the thing.

The result has its own trends and tribulations, chief among the tribulations being the supposed need to dress according to the theme of the museum exhibition being celebrated. This year, that meant China, and complications ensued.

If there is an overarching sartorial lesson to be gleaned from the hits and misses and jaw-dropping apparel adventures on view Monday night at the museum, it was this: “Fancy dress” is more successfully read as “fancy party dress” than as “costume party dress.”

Even Jean Paul Gaultier, who in his former ready-to-wear runway career never met a theme he didn’t like (1980s rock stars! Weddings! Butterflies!) seemed to understand this, and he wisely dressed his date, the singer Alicia Keys, in a full tulle skirt, midriff top and sharp cropped tuxedo jacket, for a coolly feminine version of white tie.

That was the exception, however, rather than the rule — as were the rare straight-from-the-catwalk looks: Poppy Delevingne in poppy-bestrewn Marchesa (get it?!); Caroline Trentini and Karlie Kloss in Atelier Versace; FKA Twigs in a Christopher Kane dress collaged from naked silhouettes. For the most part, China references were rife, and they ranged from cliché to capes to color.

Embroidered silks, for example, showed up on everyone from Georgia May Jagger’s Gucci robe — a little bit vintage, a little bit obvious — to Julie Macklowe’s cheongsam, though the ultimate expression of that idea was Chloë Sevigny’s hot mess of a J.W. Anderson pastiche.

Headdresses were the Halloween-worthy accessory of the night, as seen on Sarah Jessica Parker, who twinned her Philip Treacy flame-crown with a custom black H&M one-shoulder silk gown speckled with red blooms; and the shoe designer Tabitha Simmons and the model-singer Karen Elson, both in elaborate gold Dolce & Gabbana — though those last two looked a little as if they had taken their dressing cues from dolls offered in Chinatown knickknack shops rather than from Milanese artistes.

(Picture:hot pink bridesmaid dresses)

Better was the hood on Anne Hathaway’s gold Ralph Lauren column, which abstracted the whole idea into ye olde Hollywood territory, and then balanced the schmaltz with an entirely contemporary T-shirt top and body-skimming cut. You could read the inspiration in the lines of the dress, with its far-off echoes of the cheongsam silhouette, but it was more of a tease than a one-liner. Presumably she dropped the headgear once she got inside. At least she had the option.

Still, gold was the shade of the night, also present in Kate Hudson’s high-necked halter gown by Michael Kors, Jessica Chastain’s silver screen starlet Givenchy, and Fan Bingbing’s gold-sequined dress by Christopher Bu under a jade green, gold, blue and red geometric cape, which could easily have gone completely wrong but balanced on an Avengers-meets-Anna Wintour tightrope that actually made the theme work.

Red was, not surprisingly, a close runner-up: elegant and simple in Reese Witherspoon’s Jason Wu; bourgeois in the co-host Marissa Mayer’s Oscar de la Renta; unflattering in Kris Jenner’s draped, power-shouldered Balmain; and a little confused in Amal Clooney’s Maison Margiela, with its studded bustier reminiscent of a classic imperial soldier’s breastplate — topping tiers of ruffles.

(To be fair, Sienna Miller’s crimson paillette-paved Thakoon toreador suit was even more confusing: What country was she in? Not to mention Kerry Washington’s pink bubble of a Prada, with flat 1960s shoulder bows, giant bustled back and floral blooms bristling from the skirt — not so much a blend of references as references tossed into a sartorial blender.)

For over-the-top statements, however, nothing beat Rihanna’s stair-sweeping, fur-trimmed, gold satin dynastic declaration-cum-robe by the Chinese designer Guo Pei, and Kim Kardashian’s Roberto Cavalli-by-Peter Dundas white-beaded feather number, which looked as if the star of the Crazy Horse cabaret had taken her show on the road to Shanghai and dressed for the occasion.

Indeed, for a while, Ms. Kardashian seemed to be trumping everyone in the nearly-nude sweepstakes, including Jennifer Lopez in a sheer Atelier Versace design embellished with a dragon — the mythic creature carefully covering her mythic bits — until Beyoncé showed up in a custom-made Givenchy something. You couldn’t really call it a dress; it’s more like a piece of tulle with carefully placed floral posies. That wasn’t fashion; it was an Instagram moment.

Which is why it was such a relief to rest the eye on looks that threw theme to the winds in favor of elegance and style — where the finery played second fiddle, as it should, to the woman.

And so it was with Kendall Jenner’s glinting green stone Calvin Klein, bare and laced up the sides, with a hard-edge nondecorative sparkle from the front (a difficult balance to achieve); Claire Danes’s forest-green shirred Valentino with its leather-strapped waist; and Dakota Johnson’s strapless metallic Chanel minidress.

The white trousers and tunics or tabards on Liya Kebede (in 3.1 Phillip Lim) and Maggie Q (in Tory Burch) looked modern, and mobile. As did Jennifer Lawrence’s Dior, with its abstract cherry-blossom top wrapping into the suggestion of a train at the back, weird science-fiction neck detail and black column of a skirt.

They were clothes not just for a celebration, but worth celebrating.

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