The annual Met Ball extravaganza, themed this year as Gilded Glamour, drew criticism from those who thought it hugely inappropriate to hold a cavalierly ostentatious celebration of wealth while Ukraine is being battered by ’s army, the rockets and we face a global fuel crisis. Others, though, pored over the pictures from the ball and found the shenanigans a welcome – and harmless – diversion in these grim times.The theme referred to the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th Century when America’s old social order – families who could trace their lineage back to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower’s voyage from England to the New World in 1620 – had their noses whacked out of joint by the nouveaux riches, who rode into town and pretty much bought the city of New York.The newcomers had made their fortunes quickly on the expanding railways and other industrial advances. And, as anyone who watched parvenue hostess Bertha Russell’s social climbing in Julian Fellowes’s recent TV series The Gilded Age will know, too much was never enough.
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