Isn't it reassuring to see the impeccable New York fashion set enjoying themselves at a Dame Edna Everage tribute evening? Take the formidably stylish Anna Wintour, who is either immensely excited to see us or simply trying - as one does when one knows that an occasion may drag a little - to smuggle a couple of spare ovaries and a parachute into the party. Or the one-bow-is-never-enough Mischa Barton.

Bafflingly, it turns out that this is not a Dame Edna tribute but the immensely glamorous Costume Institute annual ball, which took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday night.

Under the auspices of Wintour, the ball, which takes place every year as a prelude to the fashion exhibition in the museum's special exhibitions gallery, has become one of New York's most hyped events, a cacophonous constellation of Hollywood, hair and haute couture.

Designers are said to pay handsomely for the honour of being exhibited at the Met and chairing the gala with Wintour, who, after 20 years as editor-in-chief of US Vogue, has pulled off the triple whammy of becoming an arbiter of society and cinema as well as fashion. While the Oscars have become a medley of bland outfits conceived primarily, it would seem, with the aim of not humiliating the actresses wearing them, the Met Party prides itself on its fearless style statements - and the energetic lengths to which A-listers will go: (a) to secure a ticket; and (b) to find a statement so fearless that it obliterates all others.