Met Ball 2013: The Punk Parade Punk was surprisingly thin on the ground at the Metropolitan Museum's shindig. Lisa Armstrong and Luke Leitch rate the red carpet rebels. Monday night's punk ball (one oxymoron down, 50 to go) on Manhattan's Upper East Side was never going to replicate being at the Pistols' first gig at Central St Martins in '75. One of New York's glossiest social fixtures, the gala kicks off the Metropolitan Museum's annual fashion exhibition. This year's offering is Punk: From Chaos to Couture. I think we could all guess ahead of time which part of that equation would feature most strongly on the red carpet. The non-chaotic tone was set by the hostess, Anna Wintour, an editor who is to even mild disorganisation what Sid Vicious was to skin care. Anna wore floral Chanel couture, raising eyebrows among certain affronted guests who had interpreted the dress code more punctiliously (don't worry, folks, no eyebrows were harmed in the making of Monday's personal appearances; those safety pins were clip-on). Andrew Bolton, curator of the exhibition, gallantly defended the authenticity of Anna's dress choice. "Pink was the colour of punk," he explained. It was certainly the colour of Moschino's Cheap & Chic autumn/winter 2013 "punk" collection - and of many of 2013's non-punk collections. And that's the point. Miley Cyrus steals Kate Moss' style for Punk transformation at Met Ball With tables starting at $150,000, attendees each year understandably want to see a little return for their outlay. Thus Topshop chose the event to unveil an audacious collection of floor-length evening dresses, which will be available to order and modelled by the hugely anarchic trio of Jourdan Dunn, Nicole Richie and Sir Philip Green's daughter Chloe. Modus Operandi, the part Condé Nast-owned business that allows wealthy women to put downpayments on next season's most outré pieces before anyone else gets hold of them, also had a special deal that allowed groupies to order straight from the red carpet. The pundit-erati were not amused. It wasn't just the dearth of echt piercings that appalled those who remember punk from first time around (or at least remember the John Lydon ads for Country Life butter). Where was Siouxsie Sioux, and every other surviving punk from the era? Why did everyone look so glossy? And had Kim Kardashian mixed up her invitation for one to a Michael Jackson tribute? In fact, Kim Kardashian was not channelling Jackson but debut-ing the world's first handkle - an all-in-one dress-and-matching-glove-and-manacle, which in its own rather radical but ultimately useless way was actually quite punk. In fairness, there were one or two genuinely punky moments. One was the arrival of Debbie Harry, for whose photo we had to search hard (why waste time taking pictures of one Who Was There when you can take 700 shots of Miley Cyrus instead?). Another was Dame (oxymoron 51) Vivienne Westwood's badge reminding fellow guests of Bradley Manning's continuing detainment in Guantánamo. There were the razor blades, too, although these had admittedly been harnessed to a glittering chandelier. But on the whole, the position - even among the likes of Beyoncé - was about as far from being down with the kids as a double episode of the Antiques Roadshow. The paucity of true punk attitude provoked much lip-curling on Twitter, especially in the UK. But perhaps punk, even in its purest guise, is no longer really down with the kids; it is, after all, almost 40 years since that St Martins gig. The guests may have come to praise, not bury punk, but bury it they did. Maybe the only meaningful criticism pertains to the exhibition itself. The New York Times was not effusive. The problem seems to be that being highly flammable, extremely tight and prone to being gobbed on, not much authentic fashion from the era survives. Now, that's a genuine punk statement. Left to right: Anne Hathaway, Kim Kardashian and Sienna Miller PHOTO: GETTY ANNE HATHAWAY Her image is as wholesome as spelt bread and she wears Valentino as reliably as you or I wear socks, so it seemed certain that the Met's punk theme would pass Anne Hathaway by entirely. Not so: for while the 30-year-old's vintage Valentino was conventionally elegant and her smile as floodlight-bright as usual, the Oscar-winner stole centre stage thanks to a radical reassessment of her hair colour. This is very punk in its blow-dried way - and a timely testament to the power of peroxide. KIM KARDASHIAN We're not sure what you call a sleeve that ends in a glove - a gleeve? - nor why America's chief unreality TV star went for such a chintzy, soft-furnishings print when she chose her Givenchy gown for the evening. But as it's so conventional to be sniffy about Kim Kardashian, we won't join that chorus line. After all, hers is a generation that thinks punk is a TV show presented by Ashton Kutcher, and she's heavily pregnant to boot. So just turning up was brave, and we'd shake her hand if we could see it. VIDEO: Red carpet Punks at the 2013 Met Ball SIENNA MILLER This look was so startlingly obvious that it's a wonder that many others didn't go for Miller's middle-ground combination of red-carpet dress - a crepe, ivory floor-lengther by Burberry - toughened up with a perennially punky biker jacket. Also by Burberry, Miller's leather came machine-gunned with enough studs to make Sid Snot catch his cigarette in awe. Along with Miley Cyrus this was one of the most effective combinations. Left to right: Solange Knowles and Rooney Mara PHOTO: GETTY SOLANGE KNOWLES Beyoncé's bigger-haired little sister completely ignored the dress code - as sanctioned by Anna Wintour's example (right) - in favour of a jazzily printed Kenzo leg-flasher. Unlike the many other guests who flunked punk, Knowles 2.0 didn't fall into the trap of wearing the boringly conventional eveningwear that we have come to expect on the Hollywood red carpet - think flesh tones, fishtails and pastel flashes - but this doesn't quite cut it at a fashion party. IN PICTURES: The fashion pack at the Met Ball ROONEY MARA Pale and desperate-to-be-interesting, Rooney Mara's look was more a celebration of Riccardo Tisci - the designer at Givenchy - than of punk. The plunging zippers and wan make-up did touch on the counter-culture, but both the actress and the dress were too ponderously serious. Left to right: Madonna, Anna Wintour and Miley Cyrus PHOTO: GETTY MADONNA Punk is about being confrontational - so mohawks off to Madonna for fomenting the most in-you-face look of the night. The pelvic hemline of that Givenchy couture jacket worn above layers of fishnet frayed at the buttock might not be the kind of look most people actually want to see, but the queen of the conical bra learnt long ago that aggressive dressing wins coverage. The tartan, the fraying, and the vicious studding are all motifs cut and pasted from punk, but the 54-year-old's wig is in a style lifted from a too-saucy 1950s pin-up named Bettie Page. IN PICTURES: Models at the Met Ball ANNA WINTOUR No nose-stud (not even a clip-on) and not a flash of black leather, fishnet, or safety pin to be seen. It may have been her party - the editor of US Vogue is chairman of the Metropolitan Museum's annual gala - but Wintour's refusal to play up to the evening's punk theme was a disappointment. The floral Chanel she's wearing deeply unpunk - and gives her a guests a failsafe get-out-of jail dress code clause. MILEY CYRUS Marc Jacobs made his name turning grunge - the early 1990s equivalent of punk - into a form that fashion could understand. So his transformation of Miley Cyrus from Hannah Montana into a really rather convincing punkette is probably not all that surprising. Her fishnet evening dress works nicely with the bleached hair - it's a look that Nancy Spungen would have relished. And it works as a piece of red-carpet statement wear, too. Left to right: Sarah Jessica Parker and Beyonce Knowles PHOTO: REX/GETTY SARAH JESSICA PARKER Having ticked off the prerequisite punk reference with a marvellous prosthetic Mohawk by Philip Treacy, Sarah Jessica Parker ploughed a furrow that was entirely her own. The generously skirted dress by Giles Deacon came with a split at the front that allowed her to show off her underwear, plus some velvet Louis Vuitton tartan knee-high boots. If you saw a bunch of teenagers hanging around on the high street dressed like this, you'd definitely cross the street to get away from them. So, actually, quite punk after all. IN PICTURES: Beauty highlights from the Met Ball BEYONCE KNOWLES This whopper of a flame-fringed fishtail dress, complete with matching thigh-highs, was more reminiscent of the Greased Lightning paint job that anything vaguely punky. But Beyoncé, like Madonna, is a brand all of her own and will be photographed whatever she wears. We would have loved to see her in some of Donatella Versace's new-season "Vunk" though.